Monday, November 29
SURFERS Probably this morning's surfers aren't much different from the ones I used to watch nearly fifty years ago, whose glamor seemed so much more fixed, more absolute from a distance than when they got too close, which is the fault not of myth, but of turning people into myth. I was a kid then; and they were, more or less, men, soon they'd be men for real, meaning, more or less, boys. They rarely smiled at me. They never touched me. They mostly pretended not to notice me, though one time, watching them from where I'd hidden in a stretch of dune-grass, I could see a couple of them with hands raised to their eyes, scanning the dunes as if searching, and I stood up, un-hid myself, and I could tell they'd missed me. Toward nightfall, I'm a lighthouse, I'm a lighthouse, I'd sing to myself but very softly, because boys aren't lighthouses, that's nonsense, repeat after me. I never could have guessed at it back then, this second life. It was all I could do, just to be patient as they paddled their boards out again, into the waves, then they'd catch one, and flashing my arms---extended in front of me like the twin beams of light that, softly, they'd always been also---I'd guide the men in: to shore, then closer, as if there were a choice that summer ---or ever---and I'd chosen, and I could almost still see it, from here. (Carl Phillips)