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