Dawn, tide rolling huge breakers down the inlet while, somewhere, surfers are up already, reading the ocean’s text.
Why does that feel important, worth protecting, that convivial freedom, that tranquillity, that otter-fluid grace?
How many times have Elizabeth and I watched late-night surfing shows and slept, in the afterglow, like ocean-rocked babies?
Hawaii or Australia, a paradisal beach in Fiji or Malaysia—Neruda in Rangoon, temple bells and doves!—
exoticism, yes, but I can feel its rhythm on the sandbar, whether we bodysurf for hours or idly inhabit the space,
floating, talking, buoyed and engrossed. It is about otters, the instinct to play, to invent new games—homo ludens—
to throw dice against solitude and despair—ha, we shall have a brotherhood despite you, o death!—
a type of transcendence I am eager to believe in, a myth I hunger to enshrine, like the myth of California,
though this is New Jersey, hazy sun barely risen above sandy flats of bayberry and waving reeds.
Somewhere, surfers are up already, driving the coast, tramping the dunes in dawn light, looking for waves.