The sun is high in the clear sky above the waves. Monster waves. Turquoise, translucent. Crashing, roiling, smooth and sacred.
I feel the wind’s caress on my shoulders. The kiss of the sea and salt is on my lips. And I am free.
I left the world in my car, parked next to an old van someone was living inside. A roving church to the sea and open sky, whose old deacon I see rising and falling in the huge swell.
I stop beside him. He nods to me. His eyes are the colour of the waves: Life blue and green death, containing their multitudes and their boundless depths. Always mixing but never mixed.
On our boards, we watch the sea together, until he speaks, nodding to a distant wave.
“I think this will be my last.”
“There’s always one more.” I say.
“Not always. The end of a thing is part of it too.”
I see his tanned, frail body; his shaking, wrinkled hands, and I understand. I give him space, then nod farewell.
His wave comes in its majesty, folds him in, and breaks.
I catch the next. Rush, curl, break.
His empty surfboard drifts on the whitewater.
I lift it in reverent hands, take it ashore, then bury it deep, point up, in the sand. A tombstone to honour a man no one knows is gone, except the sea, the shore, the sky and me.
I remember him, as I paddle back out to the crashing waves.