© 2004 Jenny Sadre-Orafai

The Only Poem About A Surfer

A middle-aged surfer on tv said,

I don't know, maybe you die a little.

His weathered foot, an anklet of Velcro

sinking a little into black sand.

He is scraggly sideburns, shadow faced,

and rock scarred.

He uses terms like, "knots" and "cowabunga"

in the same wet, smiling sentence

while at the points of  waves, white foam

looks like powdered sugar on holiday cookies

and blows to the left and whitens the blue sky,

even if for only seconds at a time.

Strong fingertips reach out for the shoulder

of the ocean that he refers to as "his girl."

Facing the wave, his backward salute

to the floating, to his curling shelter.

A Faster Fighter

The children next door, of a Mexican mother and Californian father,

are obsessed

with electronic, blipping games in their small hands—believing whoever

exterminates

more enemies will be the hero for the day—heroes being ever fluid

in their minds.

Their tattooed father tells his adventures in China, Japan, Hawaii, California,

all the fortunes

of a faster fighter,  a leading man when there was a time of  leading men

guiding us.

He twirls fledgling neighbor boys into headlocks, successful because they let him

win this game.

All work is copyrighted property of Jenny Sadre-Orafai.

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