He asked if he could hang with me.
I laughed at his cockiness.
That kid had ‘cojones’ at 15 years old.
I knew he was one of us.

Living legends like Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama,
Death by wipeout for Mark Foo and Kirk Pasmore,
Myths we’ve become, epics we populate.
We are few.  We are large.

What drives our destiny?
Do we smell it and follow its scent?
Do its tentacles embrace us softly?
Favored or cursed we’ll never know.

The chase for that 80 footer
may look like Ahab’s hunt for Moby
but no hatred courses through our veins.
Life grips our heart and we love.

You reporters follow us, watch us, listen to us.
Can you understand that the waves rule our lives,
their frothy exhale lures us,
their saltwater avalanche embraces us ?

Sting rays, Man o’ Wars, jelly fish
stirred into the danger soup with sea and sand,
bones, sinews, flesh, our offering,
pain fashions no leash to choke our pursuit.

Mavericks, Teahuppo, Jaws, Pipeline, Cyclops:
where razor sharp coral lie in wait,
where Great Whites stealthily roam,
where the board delivers primal union.

Ah, the waves - pounding, churning, roaring.
I paddle the face, rise up over the crest,
catch the lip, drop into the maw,
50 miles an hour through the monster barrel.

Does the joy at childbirth, the euphoria of ******,
the bliss of nirvana match the rush of the wave?
Is the steep price we pay worth it?
Can there be a cost too high for heaven?

You will laugh at me like I laughed at the kid
when I claim we are a band of brothers.
Our conflict takes place within ourselves;
blood spilled from our veins an anointing.

The kid’s eyes expose a hunger not satisfied,
a restless yearning to uncover his truth.
The ocean ministers his baptism;
an innocent courage powers his crusade.

My ride ended some years ago.
I should have bailed out
but I thought I was ripping the wave.
Hospital ceiling proved me wrong.

My muscles still now, no tracking big swells,
no taming the wild beast , no testing my luck,
yet the ribosomes, nucleus, cytoplasm of my cells
host the waves. The kid knows.