Wild Sea

[Eds. note: This is the seventh of 14 runner-up posts from the recent Kauai on My Mind Creative Competition.]

by Mary Hunter Leach

Surf is up! The wild sea is calling,
calling all who hear, calling even me (one who does not surf).
This is not a day to be indoors, to be contained,
I tell my friend. We must go out! And so we leave
our smaller, undone things, called by the wild sea.

How high they are, these waves--huge, unconquerable, salt-spraying waves--
crashing over lava rock and shoreline,
ten, no twenty feet high: glorious!
Breaking, spraying, breaking
again and again,
rhythm unseen, rhythm nevertheless.
Giant waves rush onto shore, take the beach that we know,
claiming the sand we stand on, loose branches, seaweed, so many shells.
All moves seaward, even the eyes of scattering tourists,
who find no resting places in the sun. Not today!
This is ocean, nothing less will rule!

We enter her, slowly at first, aware of danger.
Soon we are swimming out, rolling in, carried farther and farther out
each time, though we are still near shore.
I long to roll past all this, take the highest wave and soar,
but even our strongest strokes are no match
for ocean’s sweeping song.
I hear my fear, taste the salt of it, asking
how far into this wildness will I be thrown?
Will I return, still be alive?
No answer from the huge waves crashing, no
letting up, no stopping this wild sea. She is alive!

My friend’s gentle voice, laughing, relaxes me
until I become the water: I am the sea,
flowing in and out toward shore, trusting the unseen
rhythm, all that wildness flowing into
something I can bear.

Later that night, I still cannot contain myself.
I must see your face, must bring you this wild sea.
You are covered in duty, I interrupt you, yet you let me,
smiling. “I can smell it,” you say. You know the surf is up.
“Yes,” I say. I know you do, as I look at you,
calling to your own unseen wild seas.

I know you know the wild sea.