November in Nazaré
Maya Gabeira is towed to the top of a 75-foot bomb.
Go, go, go! she shouts to Carlos, her jetski driver; and she lets the rope fall.
Carlos skis the crest, watching her drop, waiting for her take hold, to sketch a creamy zigzag down a silken concrete wall.
She’s carving, shacked and slotted, fingertips brushing that wall, body and board in a curving, serpentine dance.
Oh It’s way more than pretty, Maya charging the bumps inside the greenroom, the tube, under the frothy curl as its thick crest crumbles over itself.
Pitching and riding to the outback, beneath and beyond the peel,
skating the end of the barrel.
Times she’ll wipeout, be rolled underwater, washed through pounding surf: tumbling
rocks and roiling sand. Maya’s been CPR’d back to life, she’s been hospitalized.
This is no cakewalk
but a threadthin dance through a blistering avalanche.
For today, her glossy head emerges. Up pops her board. Carlos zips round on the ski
clasps her hand and pulls her up; they watch for another pointbreak
heart-stopping wave. They climb.
Holding the tow rope, Maya slips off the back of the ski.
She lets the rope fall.
I don’t know how far a prayer will reach, or sometimes how near.
A baby, twisting—just this morning—from determined crawl
to a wobbly seat on the carpet,
sweet arms lifted in pleasure—
delicious delight on the video chat.
Five little girls playing across the street, staccato fade of their twilight voices
inventing the future.
My neighbor with a deep and private sorrow: estrangement, daughter, money—still,
she drops by my house with raisin bread.
The sidewalk icy. Air chastised with wind.
Through the window I watch as she chats up the postman.
That slick, light magnetized towrope. Attachment and tether. Safe harbor. Quiescence.
Stagnation.
Drop it.
Drop it now.
Heidi Naylor writes and teaches in Idaho. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Jewish Journal, Portland(magazine of the University of Portland), Exponent II, the Idaho Review, New Letters, Dialogue, Eclectica, and other magazines. She has a recent fellowship in literature with the Idaho Commission on the Arts and served as Writer (Poet) in Residence at the Marian Pritchett School. Find her at heidnaylor.net.
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