Poem of the Week: 2.2.23
"Surfers" by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
SURFERS
by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
Surfers horizon a seminar with the waves: What else can we stand?
Thanks for reading the Poem of the Week!
I’ve only tried surfing once. It was fun! I thought my ab-less body would never be able to stand up and hang ten, but (with the help of a comically large surfboard) it was.
I wrote this poem on the beach reflecting on the wise words of my surfing teacher Windu: “Don’t fight the water. Accept it.” Surfing gurus are more poetic than I could ever hope to be. Sigh.
He was right, though. Once I leaned into the chaos of balancing on a pointed piece of plastic in the ocean, I could do it. Water kept getting in my eyes, my arms were tired 10 minutes in, and I don’t think I looked great doing it, but my comfort grew as I trusted the process more. In a sense, I could stand once I stopped worrying so much about standing.
“Surfers” is a haiku that tries to capture this spirit. I had fun with some wordplay here: “horizon” as a verb, and “stand” with its many meanings. Like many of my poems, the poem has a nugget of autobiographical truth in it: “seminar” is both a reference to my own surfing class as well as a nod to the natural wisdom I see in teachers like Windu. The final line can be interpreted as a conversation between surfers looking for their next curl to grind, or a rhetorical question posed to the reader: if we have withstood wave after metaphorical wave so far, is there any reason to think we can’t stand through the next one?
To me, pushing ourselves teaches us to be resilient, and resilience teaches us that there is meaning in our struggles.
Gnarly, Ricky
