Ballad of the Ancient Surfer by Brad Hachten
(of Coleridge)
The Surf is down and boredom bites,
“What else is there to do?”
“Let’s all have a laugh and banter
The ancient surfer dude.”
We took our boards back up the beach
And locked them in the car,
Crossed the highway and found our man
Inside the local bar.
And there he sat slumped on his stool,
Drinking rum on credit,
Brown, long, and lank, in fact he stank,
Looking quite pathetic.
Give him a rum, his liquid sun
To lighten up his mood.
He’ll drink it up and spill his guts –
The song of an old fool.
“Tell about the endless summer.”
“Bring him another rum.”
“And searching for the perfect wave.”
“All those days in the sun.”
The old surfer stared into his glass
“There was a wave,” said he,
And quaffed the rum in one quick shot,
“A perfect wave, indeed.
“When I was young, I had the sun,
Revering the ocean tides.
Living by surf and sand and sea,
I rode the crest of times.
“The California life I led,
Not of inland valley.
Never one for the mundane side
Neptune’s waves would call me.
“Paddling out into the surf,
Sitting astride my board,
My eyes would light upon the sight,
A coming swell of burgeoning height,
Sending my heart to soar.
“Striking the sea with hurried strokes,
Up and onto my board,
I rode the waves of western myth
And California lore.
“Cutting down the face of the wave,
Just ahead of the break,
Feeling the splash against my back,
Setting my pulse to race.
“To ride the adrenaline high
Stoked deep in the barrel
And reap the power of the sea,
A surfers life I chose to lead,
Never mind the peril.
“But never one so satisfied
With waves of everyday.
No squalid highs could feed my pride,
Destiny called for greater heights,
I sought the perfect wave.
“Up and down the Pacific coast,
Across the eastern shore,
Of knights no less did have their quest,
A backpack and my board.
“Off to the Hawaiian Islands,
Surfing the North Shore break,
Playing the tides to reach the heights
Searching the perfect wave.
“Crossing over the equator,
In endless summer way,
And summer bright, I sought the heights
Searching the perfect wave.
“And from the South Pacific
Surfing Polynesia,
I searched the lands of Asia
Surfing Indonesia.
“Africa, India, China,
The Indies east and west,
Wherever the waves are breaking,
I surfed among the best.
“Off the coast at Playa Negra
And Waimea Bay,
Up and down the Skeleton Coast
Searching the perfect wave.
“As the sea had rocked Ulysses,
The surf would upwell me.
Wandering the endless summer
A surfer’s odyssey.
“So to the beach my eyes beseeched
The sea nymphs on the shore.
Charmed by the song of the sirens,
At night the bonfires roared.
“But disenchantment ever bounds,
Clutching me down at bay.
No woman would be mooring me
For I was married to the sea
Searching the perfect wave.
“Australia and New Zealand,
Back to the U.S.A.,
Ashore to spawn and leave at dawn,
Searching the perfect wave.
“Born my daughter without her father
To see her justly raised.
Like Agamemnon on the beach
A sacrifice was made.
Towards the sea to favor me
Searching the perfect wave.
“And back in California,
While waxing down my board,
The tropical seas of Cancer
Raged fierce into a storm
And from the churning, monstrous brew
A fateful wave moved north.
“It was a mid-September day,
The hordes of summer passed,
Paddling out in waters tranquil
Strangely alone at last.
“No pelicans skimming the sea
Nor sound of squawking gull,
There were no fish that I could see
When fate began to call.
“On the horizon to the south
Titanic waves appeared
Cresting helter, crashing skelter,
As something big drew near.
“Gripping my board, bearing the brunt,
Fighting against the break,
Dead ahead and coming for me,
I saw the perfect wave.
“The ocean rose into a swell
Of monumental size.
Cresting higher in perfect form
And blotting out the sky.
“Swallowing hard and paddling fast
Upon that crest so high,
Up on my board erect I rose,
Seizing the throne in Neptune’s home,
Lord of the ocean wide.
“Over the falls of steep relief,
Down the wave at the break,
The frothing furies at my back,
Cutting across the face,
Deep in the barrel of thunder
Surfing the perfect wave.
“But far from that of a sea god,
My human feet did slip
Head over heels I fell from grace
Into the earth’s abyss.
“With one great splash, my soul had crashed
Swallowed into the sea.
And that monster of perfection
Took hold and strangled me.
“Like the serpents sent by Neptune
As told in Virgil’s epic,
That seized upon Laocoön,
I fought the ocean’s grip.
Struggling at the whim of the wash
Tossing, turning, frantic.
“But I broke free, my head emerged
Above a sea of foam.
My surfboard smashed to pieces
Around me in the float.
“Salt water soaked I floundered to shore
Coughing up the sea.
Broken and weak and more to truth
The ocean coughed up me.
“Oh, but if the sea had taken me then.
“Like flotsam washed up on the beach
I came back to the land.
With new found love I kissed the shore
And tasted bitter sand.
“Clouds moved over, the wind blew sharp
Striking at summer’s end.
The piercing cold shot through my soul,
Endless winter moved in.
“Into a pit my life was tossed,
The tumbling depths of the tidal wash,
Had yet to be the worst.
For choking on the perfect wave
There still remains a perfect taste
And gives a Tantalus thirst:
Imperfection is all I see,
It scalds my eyes, it burns to breathe –
The California curse.
“Roaming in pain the coastal plain,
Spurred by endless torment.
Speaking my mind in silly rhymes
Soaked in briny lament.
“Deep in the barrel of despair,
Sinking in self-pity,
For I was married to the sea,
Aye, married to the sea.
And a sea of cold indifference
Was all to comfort me.
“Still I hear the ocean calling,
A song that calls me home.
A song beyond the breaking waves
Towards horizons close.
“A song so clear it rings my ears
From the depths of the sea.
And it keeps on calling...calling...
Endlessly calling me.
“Poetry’s for the professors
Behind their ivory walls.
The words live, die, and are buried,
Rotting in ivory halls.
“The din is loud in southern Cal,
I see how bored you grow.
But before my words sink and drown,
Hear me before you go.
“That for every perfect wave,
Reaching the heights aloft,
There comes a curl and then a crash
Into a perfect trough.
“Your obsession for perfection
Becomes a foolish quest,
Breaking out from under you down
To craving for your death.”
That’s what he said before we left
For then the surf was up.
We grabbed our boards and paddled out
To ride the waves we loved.
Later we heard the solemn word
The old surfer was dead.
Jumped and drowned off of pier’s end,
A suicide they said,
Hoisting up his bloated body
Bound in fisherman’s lead.
His words came back just like a splash,
To ripples in abate,
Then waters still and time dismissed
As rantings of a lunatic,
The tides are left unchanged.
The ocean sings eternally
Of promise in the wind
Beyond the California break,
Burgeoning swells come in.
We grab our boards and paddle out,
Desire rules the day.
Squinting our eyes against the sun
Searching the perfect wave.