Deacon of The Sea

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.