(for Kai Owens, our seatmate on our Nov. 19 flight to Hawaii)

They start them here young,
as little as two or four,
on boogie boards in swells
so small they barely qualify
as waves.

But that’s how you learn,
my rangy seatmate on the plane tells me,
as he heads home for Thanksgiving.

“Pitched, pummeled and pounded,”
his dad likes to say about surfing—
a risky sport—but I’ve never met
a surfer who didn’t happily
embrace the thrill and try to
ignore the potential for harm.

He’s 18 now, going to college in
Northern California, but he can’t wait
to get back to Haleiwa to throw himself
off the tall rocks at Waimea today
and tomorrow hit the predicted
6 to 8 footers.

He’s just beginning to maneuver
through the world like he shreds waves,
for the first time filling out the required
state form on the plane by himself—
though he’s forgotten his town’s ZIP Code,
transposed two letters in his middle name
and signed his name with a squiggle
because his handwriting doesn’t
lean to cursive.

He reminds me of some of my
former students, so raw and unformed,
so sweet and earnest. Yet I have every
confidence that this young kane will
get home, wax his stick, set the soles
of his long feet back on warm sand
after too much time away,

and be riding waves with his buddies
every day for the next week, sliding
into zippy cutbacks and elegant kick outs—
salt in his eyes, gratitude in his heart—
perhaps getting a little pummeled
in the process, storing up aloha
for the rest of the semester.

•••

kane (kah-nay): Hawaiian for “man”