Surf Baby

The Poem

The boards are staked.This is how it begins —before the sun is fully up, before the swell reveals itself, before anyone has paddled out —the boards in the sand, each one a declaration:I was here first. This is my slice. This is where I’ll be for the next twelve hours.

Pink and yellow and orange and every color a summer ever made —each board a different person’s idea of who they are on the water,the self you become when the wave is comingand the only thing that matters is the reading of it and the commitment and the ride.

Every color a summer ever made

The back and forth begins before the paddle out.Who’s coming later. What time. Which direction from.

The surf baby — the beauty who makes the whole day worthwhile,who arrives when the morning has fully opened,who is why the sun showed up in the first place.Summer walking toward you across the sandin the light that was already perfect and just became more so.

The love arrives like the waves.The heartbreak too — crashing, pulling back,the white water settling into the next thing the way white water always settles,the way summer always becomes the memory of summerthat keeps the good waves and the surf baby in the specific light of the morning she arrived.

The love arrives like the waves

The boards are staked.The sky is that color. The swell is reading right. The morning is all potential —the football on the beach, the end of day walk, the amber light,the whole unrepeatable specific beautiful summer day already beginning.

The surf baby is why the sun arrives.I believe this.The sun rises knowing it will be appreciated —by the boards in the sand, by the paddle out, by the white water and the waves and the walk at the endwhen the day has given everything it had —

and everyone is tired
in the specific good way of people
who spent twelve hours
exactly where they were supposed to be.