September 1965, Sand Hill Cove

September 1965, Sand Hill Cove

The surfer sat propped up against his yellowed pop-out Kahuna*, almost as a monument to the summer that would pass in a day. A near-silence shrouded the beach except for the whisper of the soft breeze passing through the slender dune grass, the sweet fragrance of seaweed carried in its gentle grasp. A few children played near their mothers below the almost crystalline blue sky dotted by occasional cirrus above a calm sea.

This is a poem I wrote about an idealized perfect day just before leaving for my freshman year of college. The recollection is both magical and ethereal, but based on the experiences of an actual day. The Kahuna I owned was manufactured and sold at a surf shop in Cranston, Rhode Island. It was my first board and actually did take on a yellow patina, its foam core having been processed with oil as opposed to alcohol, as much as I could understand the technical steps in producing a surfboard. Sand Hill Cove had waves that could be ridden only on days the surf was really up, its shores guarded by a breakwater. This is an excellent companion piece to the essay "Sand Hill Cove." The poem originally appeared in Z Net Creative. The world was new and the surf was up!

* A "Kahuna" was a surfboard named after the Hawaiian god of the surf.