The Drop
Hauling me out
to the take-off zone,
one arm is lost
in the stunning cold,
the other poised to plunge.
Out of the grey expanse
emerges my leviathan.
Bathed in adrenalin,
I claw my way into
its murky green magnitude.
Standing weightless
and fluid, I rip a gash
down the face of time.
I nearly make the drop—
fall into the face—
but something’s not right.
I’ve been held under
but not like this:
I never felt so turbulent,
then still.
The bottom-dwellers
want me home,
but I don’t go well.
My burning lungs
flood with cold—
then with surrender,
easing me back in
to the Afterlife.
My bleached-out hair,
like my blueing fingers,
drifts with the current.
The last of my oxygen
flares up to the light.
My final thought:
I made it.
© 2018 Katherine Williams
The circumstance of this poem is the shocking death of champion big-wave surfer Mark Foo in 1994 after wiping out on a not-gigantic Mavericks wave. Nobody can say for sure what caused him to drown, but we do know he died doing the thing he most loved in life.
The author gratefully acknowledges publication of “The Drop” in Porter Gulch Review 36, David Dougherty et al., Eds. Aptos, CA: Cabrillo College (2020)
