Sometimes I forget how much I used to love writing poetry. Until I go through my phone on a lazy morning and find something like this. Every once in a while, in between articles that are supposed to be useful, I enjoy publishing random stuff that once meant something to me. Riding the wave of nostalgia, so to speak.
Was this poem due to my tumultuous long-distance relationship at the time? Or to my bout of crazy working, networking and traveling thousands of kilometers back and forth? Feeling out of control… and kind of liking it? All the above, probably.
After that summer, everything would change.
A period of great loss would follow, and then finally coming out the other side, still struggling but able to breathe, with revised ideas on life and its constellations. I think this poem is one of the last remainders of that earlier time of “innocence” and the rashness of a late bloomer. Or perhaps it was prescient of the other wave to come that I’d find myself riding out for years?
Throughout young adulthood, I’ve had memorable dreams and nightmares about waves and even tsunamis.
But the precise catalyst for the poem doesn’t really matter. You can interpret poems differently at each stage of your life. Or even depending on what you’re going through that particular day.
So maybe this random poem found on my phone on a Tuesday still means something to me. And maybe it will speak to you, too.
Ride the wave
Just ride the wave
Conscious
Feel it all
As it tosses you
Steals your breath
Rams sand in your throat
The grains inside your chest
The familiar grating pain
No surfboard in sight
To pick you up
No clear liquid
To neutralize the salt
Coming out with the water
Rubbing against
Your grazed knees
Down against the shore again
But never quite dry
Waiting immobile
With eyes closed
For the next wave
Conscious…
(C) Ana Ribeiro, May 2014
