Waikiki
Beach boys really surf
unlike The Beach Boys
who sing
Rabbit is old and white-
haired he surfs
rents boards to tourists
at Waikiki
he pushes the girls
into their first one
on an eleven-foot waterlogged
soft-top that has buoyed
thousands down the years.
The Waikiki wave is a figure of fun
too beautiful and pointless for some
but outside it's often
worth the paddle
and inside the bikinis form
a beguiling view
receding from Rabbit's eye
the perfect V
and beneath, the ocean bottom.
Trestles
Every day without a net
they accompany fishermen
working the same waters
Boddhisatvas with thirty-three forms
seeing the reflections of the moon
on the surface of the sea
a broken mirror
when the wind is on it
past the raised train tracks
removing all worldly concerns
monks who keep themselves warm
burning statues of the Buddha
since if the Buddha is within
there’s no reason
not to use them to stoke the fire.
One of the ways to meditate
is to imagine what the wave
will look like: open your eyes
even the common people receive
spiritual enlightenment
in the Zen tradition
the daughter of an abbot listens
she dies just before the father
caring for him in the afterlife
while you may look to be
in seated meditation
you are poised to leap
up on the board
like the blind man
who still carries a lantern.
Pine Trees
The guys go down on the beach
at night with slack-key guitars
after a drink or two at Tahiti Nui
they sing songs of Bobo
with her long gray braids
she's a sober legend now
works at the surf shop in town
but you don't write songs about sober
Bobo at her peak swam ten miles
off the Napali coast naked,
her suit, three joints and a book
of matches sealed airtight
in a container towed behind.
A big wave bodysurfer
she was that rare drunk
who'd swim from Ha'ena
all the way to Hanalei Liquors
for a bottle. Now that's strength
of poor character. On a bender
she couldn't swim
back to the treehouse
at Taylor Camp
and her husband and her girls
but being bad she could take man
after man on the beach
between drinks all night long
a scenario worthy of any number
of songs still sung today.
There's a moon rainbow over
the mountain as the squall passes.
Every time you surf Pine Trees
you surf the Pavilion, the Pier
or paddle out to Middles
sing mahalo nui loa to Bobo
Crow like a cock standing
on the shore
remember that your ancestors
stay around for a year
to help you grieve
then they're gone
get into trouble
and then, like Bobo, get out of it.
The Hanalei break contains
every wave in the world
now and again take the big one
knock a few back
then swim a very long way
down in Hanalei Bay.
The Pier
While you're buying a Chuck Dent cruiser
9 foot 10 of pure slow on a single fin
priced at 225 (he takes two bills)
at the first-Saturday swap in Hanalei
two guys like gods are killing it
a thousand yards off your point
on 15-foot waves
trading between the jet ski
and the strap-in board
just killing it on the hydrofoil
rising above the wave to fly
for God's sake it's Laird
and it's Titus
they're making a flick
whooping it up like Charles Atlas
kicking sand in the face
of the weak and the thin.
Outside at the Bowl
it's still winter
and this U-shaped bay
points straight north to the Aleutians
it's triple overhead for the guys
with big guns and the chops
to paddle 500 yards.
Leave large to the gods
paddle the Chuck out
at the Pier in the small
and the choppy
until some rogue wave
slips in from the Bay
turning to take it
all I do is make it
over the falls
soup above my head.
Walking onto the shore
a girl with a board says
'That was awesome, man'
showing that surviving
with the wrong equipment
is one way to impress the young.
Lawrence Wilson is a newspaper editor and columnist in Southern California. He surfs at San Onofre, Doheny, Bolsa Chica, and the North Shore of Kauai. He studied poetry at UC Berkeley with Ron Loewinsohn, Josephine Miles, Thom Gunn, and Seamus Heaney. Two others from his chapbook "Twenty Surf Poems and a Song of Despair," "San Simeon" and "Hanalei Colony, " have been published in Slake and in the Berkeley Poetry Review.