Surfing on the Poetry Bus

We were asked this week for poems to do with sea, swimming or bathing. But do take a look and read the challenge for yourself at:  http://networkedblogs.com/9ZSOY

The Surfer

The wave is sexual
is all excitement, power.
You'd wait a lifetime for the one I mean,
as a poet for his masterwork
a lover for the idolized.

The wave is my beloved.

Treading water
like pacing a street corner,
scanning the horizon...
how to spot her in the crowd
to pick her from the endless stream
of waves identical?

If there's a visual sign
I have no word for it.
Not height, weight, speed nor light,
not colour beam nor breadth...

Somehow I'll know.

Far off, I've chosen her.
Move forward. Gain
as much momentum as I can
until I feel her slide beneath me,
speeds synchronized,
her belly lifting mine,
mine perched on hers.

Our tipping points meld into one -
the perfect union.
Adjust my body angle
then feel her surge, stop, sway, dissemble -
or the perturbations come from me,
from my uncertainties.

Does she feel me as I feel her?
The question's not so strange,
she feels the ocean floor,
becomes pure mathematics,
as she always was -
the ratio of length of wave
to depth of sea will break her yet.

Storm-crafted and storm-driven
across a millpond undersea,
she planes its grain towards the shore
and curls up in a perfect circle
one huge shaving from the sea -
the crest on which we ride.

Inshore, the sea bed,
rises through the Zen-like calm,
replaces it. She feels
the drag of sand
and gravel on her underside,
but then again,
the crest is hampered not a jot, flies on.
And thus she leans,
spills forward,
as a runner when he stumbles might,
all balance lost.

The perfect circle is deformed,
stretched out into a long elipse.

There is a magic number to the lean:
at one in seven she holds on;
a fraction more, the wave explodes.
A million shards, and every one
and every molecule, to weave
its fractal from the sun.
For half a second - hardly more -
Eternity's begun.

---

Guests invited for
"Intimate Shooting Party"
Balmoral - this weekend.