THE FIRST:  Surf’s Up

THE FIRST:  Surf’s Up
To Andrew Marvell, after “The Garden” (1681)

Ribbons and medal from the beach
I’ve won and more within my reach,
But wasted most the day in sand
In-between heats as a surf fan.
Ten and eight times I shot Scripps Pier
To righteously ride through NO FEAR.
And three more times for “Let’s Get Wet”
In cinematic fare, I’m set.

More than Quiet, I found here;
Enchanted sparkling paths do tier
Beneath the naked swimming moon
Violent dangerous furies boom:
Boisterous breakers bellow loud
In tempestuous roaring seas proud.
Society is still quite rude.
Since your time, became more crude.

No face, no bodies so hard-tan
Could keep me in the sand a fan.
The face lifting steel blue and clear
Held back, held high by wind so sheer !
In search of those, I’d roam the coast
Not for the sand to roast and boast.
Nor with graffiti marked the pier
Like PB Toads, who themselves cheer !

Warm wine in your garden drinking
Remember:  “Live, for I am coming!”
Vesuvius shot ten and seven miles
Preserved you in your peristyle
Under two hundred fifty feet !
Pebbly-rubbly volcanic heat,
Ash clouds of poison gas did reap.
On the Bay of Naples, I’d weep.

What wondrous life I once had led,
Surf crowned and arched over head,
At glass-off the mirror-still wave,
It’s water paradoxical did pave
A solid face of rigid beauty !
Graceful, its pure fluidity.
I stumbled not to slip the board
Under my feet to plane forward !

Surfing the perfect wave, I find
It’s more than a bliss which does bind,
It is harmony with boundlessness,
Paddling and gliding to caress
Rising kiss of sweet lip forming:
Sunset glass-off, chill-still mornings,
In this vast glory, threading the mind
Its thought quick goes to ride sublime.

Better yet than perfect pipe rides,
When out ahead the surfboards dives.
‘neath white avalanche I egress,
Lost in topsy-turvy deepness.
Palaces of slippery seaweed snare
Me, dropping through into its lair.
Semi-permeable membrane made,
I trust, trust thrust me from the grave.

The soul’s not vested only in mind,
But the perfect state be combined
With body, its osmotic mesh
Through which the Life-Force tests
My truth, when in storm surf ventur’d,
Supplicated nomenclature.
In the drilling of heaving waves,
Ask’d Life! To weave Its breathing rays.

My crooked, crippled knees can’t twist
The board the same to turn it best.
The sea came devastating beach,
No board, I can’t resist its reach.
With Duck Feet, I can feel again !
Or troll waist deep in crashing surf:
Not the garden, the Sea came first.

Notes:  form poem, aligned left, 8 line verse stanzas, rhyming couplets, Tetrameter. KMcN

POETRY.

Time is a river, perpetually flowing.
Poetry like leaves shed in the fall;
Aimlessely floating but turning and showing,
Colours and styles, some to enthrall.

Millions of volumes start on this journey;
Fragile boats of word pictures painted.
Only to drown in the rapids of blarney;
Waterfalls of reason leave many wasted.

Nobility of thought expressed with allure;
Buoys some on while others just wallow.
Only a few, so very few will endure,
To inspire and to bless the ages that follow.

Pikey.

Sailing on “Hattie”

Sailing on “Hattie”

no, she is not alone
you are here, here with her
here, here, here on this boat
a likeness of a first boat, a trimaran she helped build.
the boat she walked away from, the boat she remembers up on the ways
at Harbor Boat and Yacht dwarfed by the giant hulls
of commercial tuna boats swollen with worm rot
and, yet, as with the first, a big boat,
something you feel.
winch yourself up the main to the crow’s nest and
lean out, spread your arms over her beam - -
the outer hulls are wings, great white wings
which promise other places, the Society and Marquesas.
this boat was built because the woman could - - because she knew
the first boat so well, every detail.
alone she sails, but not alone, Remember
you are here, here with her - - pushing away morning,
winching in the main sheet, dodging sharply tiered straits,
riding out the boils and brews of sucking water,
jibing away from jagged, crustacean encrusted rocks.
Quickly let out the main, raise the spinnaker
- - watch as the sails fill with wind
speeding you by knuckled granite spewed in the way, the way
bones are hastily thrown in an open grave.  There
the soft coast of an overgrown island, opened like broken fruit.
we can nap in the bowed light weaving shadow in the botanicals
amidst the buzz of bees.  it’s the trumpet blasts of the elephants
thundering out of the mountain, the hard split of the camel
and the grind of the work horse calling us back.
here we sail alone, not alone, remember
she is here, here pushing away morning,
pulling herself in and pushing out again.
the light changes on the trunk of a tree, the tree outside
your kitchen window and so changes how to see the tree
and measure time.  coming home to your walls
does it look as if someone has been here - - yes ?
has someone broken in, moved the wall, the one across from your bed ?
after many years do the cycles seem smaller,
happen faster ? - - does the repetition tighten
the walls of your home, a landlocked place,
squeezing everything inside-out, compressing
expectation, expanding dreams ?  the note says she’s out.
she making sail, she knows every detail.

Albatross

Upon a twisted path I cross
A stunning nature’s albatross
It’s yellow feathers loosely spun
Glittered in the golden sun

On frosted sturdy leg it rests
On crusted leaves, it’s autumn nest
And when the winter’s snow will fall
Will shed it’s splendor before us all

Intoxication of Illusion

The magical prescence manifesting
mirrors the poet-picasso-passion-power
invested in me by a universe
experiencing ecstatic intimacy
through this heavenly body and my divine polarity.
Cosmic counterparts coupling,
uniting, inviting primal explosions:
portals of expanding consciousness;
transcending, transforming, transporting
by penetrating deep within the world-womb,
the source of knowing,
the secret-soul-center,
which is longing for liberation from limitation,
separation, and the intoxication of illusion.