HURRICANE WARNING: SURFERS

Around the bend slides an ocean eerie with storm light

and them at serious play: red and yellow wet suits, blue

and lime, their unconcern a reminder of something

long forgotten but now too strong to let go. Wind tugs

our pants and sleeves and has our hair fly back like spume

from the crests of fifteen footers rolling in. We lean

against the wind and hear the fringe of pampas grass

threshing above the beach where these boys worry

not a jot for tomorrow and make light of the leaden

swells -

a dream of Waimea Bay and the ache of endless summer

come at last to the Carolinas. Oblivious of snapping red

flags,

riptides and undertows, they wait and wait for the one

moment

to lift them, a force evolving shape within us, making us

wait too, smile when the curl flexes and tilts them ahead

toward a lethal bottom of sand. How they tame the edge,

gravity giving way to a grace of their own making!

Some miss the moment and wait still, and when we leave

the island, exiled inland, I'm not even thinking of our

house

turned to matchwood. Days later, through sweaty hours

of shingle and tack, chainsaw and tree limb, I still see

that boy farthest out, the one waiting past friends, now up

in one motion, his wetsuit blazing orange, ready to defy

all ruin.