I’m walking on the beach this
cold brisk morning,
the bleached sea grass bending in the wind, when there,
up ahead, in the pewter waves, I see a surfer in his wet suit,
sleek as a seal, cutting in and out of the curl, shining in the light.
I’m on the far side of sixty, athletic as a sofa, but this is where
the longing starts, the yearning for another life, the one
where I’m lithe and long-limbed, tanned California bronze,
short tousled hair full of sunshine. The life where I shoulder my board,
stride into the waves, dive under the breakers, and rise; my head shaking
off water like a golden retriever. I am waiting for that perfect wave
so I can crouch up and catch it, my arms out like wings, slicing back
and forth in the froth, wind at my back, sea’s slick metal polished
before me. Nothing more important now than this balance between
water and air, the rhythm of in and out, staying ahead of the break,
choosing my line like I choose these words, writing my name
on water, writing my name on air.
"Surfer Girl" by Barbara Crooker, from More.
© CR Press, 2010. the bleached sea grass bending in the wind, when there,
up ahead, in the pewter waves, I see a surfer in his wet suit,
sleek as a seal, cutting in and out of the curl, shining in the light.
I’m on the far side of sixty, athletic as a sofa, but this is where
the longing starts, the yearning for another life, the one
where I’m lithe and long-limbed, tanned California bronze,
short tousled hair full of sunshine. The life where I shoulder my board,
stride into the waves, dive under the breakers, and rise; my head shaking
off water like a golden retriever. I am waiting for that perfect wave
so I can crouch up and catch it, my arms out like wings, slicing back
and forth in the froth, wind at my back, sea’s slick metal polished
before me. Nothing more important now than this balance between
water and air, the rhythm of in and out, staying ahead of the break,
choosing my line like I choose these words, writing my name
on water, writing my name on air.
Somewhere beneath the lines is music, if you're old enough to hear it. You've got to go back a long time--an old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties, some California dreamin' thing I can still hum and hit most of the lyrics. Came out in 1963. I was in 9th grade, old enough to dream.
If you're into minutia, "Surfer Girl" happens to be Brian Wilson's very first composition and the title of his first big album.
He wrote the song when he was just a kid. To some people my age, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were as big--bigger--than the Beatles. Their sweet crooning was a perfect sunset off Malibu. Even for me back then, Southern California seemed Nirvana. It couldn't be heaven because heaven was a Christian place, and lil' surfer girls had nothing to do with church. It was Nirvana.
The song, like the poem, is quite simple. Matters not if you're on the beach at San Clemente or at the sale barn in Sioux Center, we all got dreams, and Brian Wilson's is being loved by some bikini-clad doll whose love for the perfect wave won't be bested, even though Mr. Wilson promises he'll take her anywhere in his chariot, his Woodie.
Don't know Barbara Crooker, who describes herself as nothing like the surfer she spots. She certainly isn't the sweetie Brian Wilson had in mind when he was 19 and spotted his lil' surfer girl, if that young thing was real at all--she may not have been. May have been a dream. That's okay too. That's what the song and the poem are all about.
There's no sex inn Barbara Crooker's "Surfer Girl," just desire--desire for something blessedly different, something beautiful, something out there, her "arms out like wings. . .wind at her back, sea's slick metal polished/before me." It's a wish that strikes her one morning on a beach, a wish to inhabit, just for a morning maybe, someone other than her sixty-plus year-old frame, someone who is not "athletic as a sofa." She wishes, just momentarily, for that which cannot and will not be. If we believe her, she's not the surfer girl of the music, but for a moment there on the beach she is. That's the joy of the poem.
I ran across a somewhat contemporary Beach Boys' rendition of "Surfer Girl" on Youtube. It's silly and even a little grody when old men croon as if they were still studly, but if you stay with this old classic until the end (starts at about 2:10), you'll see something remarkable--well, on second thought, maybe not remarkable at all if you read and heed the poem: you'll see Brian Wilson tear up. Watch.
It's the very same desire Barbara Crooker feels in her innards one morning on the beach, and it's not craven or silly or somehow sinful. It's human. And her putting that feeling down as she has in this wistful and warm little lyric is an act of kindness because, truth be told, everyone feels it sometime, a desire for that perfect wave, which isn't a wave at all. It's so much more.
Poetry does a kindness when it tells us what Barbara Crooker does in "Surfer Girl"--we're not alone.
Even us non surfers tear up a little as Brian Wilson did in this older rendition of Surfer Girl. Having a son inlaw who's a surfer as well as his dad in Ca. brings home the yearnings of the wave to another generation of surfers as my grandchildren take to the board.
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