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SUMMER LOVE AND SURF
by Philip Appleman
Morning was hesitating when
you swam at me through wave on wave
of sheet and blanket, glowing like
some dimly sighted
flora at the bottom of the sea.
Around your filmy hair, light
was seeping in with water-sounds,
low growling in the distance, like
dragons chained.
After our small storm dwindled,
we faced the rage outside, swells
humping up far out and charging in
to curl and pause
and dash themselves to soapsuds on
the stork-legged pilings of our house.
The roar was hoarser now, the wrecks of kelp
were heaping food for flies,
our long-nosed sand birds staying
close to dry land; farther out,
pelicans arched their wings in quick surprise
and gulls screamed urgently.
The call was there:
we fought the breakers out
and rode their fury back, triumphant
and again triumphant, till
at last, ears stuffed with brine and heads a-spin
like aging boxers battered,
we flopped face down on hot sand, smelling sun
and salt and steaming skin. Your eyes were suddenly
all sleep and love, there in the sun
with sea birds calling.
The sky goes metal at the end,
water, gray and hostile, lashing out
between the day and night. Plastic swans
are threatened; deck chairs, yellow towels, barbecues
stand naked to the peril, as if it were
winter come by stealth.
Still later, in the lee of dark and warmth,
we probe the ancient fear: at night
The sea is safer under glass, the crude,
wild thing half tamed to shed its past –
galleons sent to fifty fathoms, mountains
hacked to rubble, cities stripped.
At night the sea, barbaric bellows stifled,
sprawls outside the window, framed
like a dark, unruly landscape.
Behind us is a darker kind of dark:
I watch your eyes
for signals.
The music makes a pause for prophecy:
“Tomorrow, off-shore breezes and . . .”
Warmth to each other’s warmth, we do not listen.