Classic Poem

Reading physics in the Charger
at North Bondi; after a while
it gets hard to concentrate.
All that sunlight.

Clouds moving just fast enough
to be boring if you watch them,
totally different the next time you look.
All that wind.

Two drunks sway down the ramp,
drinking white metho. They argue.
One punches the other in the face.
He falls on the sand.

Three boys, two frisbees: hypnotic
laws of flight and silhouette,
curvature and traceries of air.
All that aerodynamic stuff.

You think of Hebrew etymology.
Grace is God’s smile, or God smiling
on us. Mercy means running towards
someone in love.

So you go swimming. The wave looms
dark, you stroke twice and are launched
into fierce velocities of green.
First wave of spring.

Under the water the sunlight bends
when waiting for waves you practise
being weightless. Just you and the light
in a pale green world.

A westerly is blowing all the waves’
bellies hollow. You sweep
to the base and they burst in a silver
chaos of splintering;

and in this swollen place
of light and speed
you are beside yourself with happiness,
airborne, almost,

for an instant
on the inside of a wave.