“It was so live.”

-Christopher Snow, Seize the Night. Dean Koontz.

To live, to ride,

the salt crusts the lip, underneath your feet

dark shapes float unseen.

Feel the swell of the waves, and the deadly undertow

as seaweed eddies like ghost hands

plying for a lost soul.

Smell the brine as you wait, breathless,

for the tide’s growing, rising,

and the inevitable crash comes as you paddle

past the surf and past the breakers, deep,

where foam laces and crystals hiss in the air,

flung by some furious sea-god, and you,

rushing on those waves with a sleek board,

the salt on your tongue and the waves

with the primordial call to sink you back to the deep.

Yet you float, skim, skate, defiantly, victoriously, live.