The cars sped by at eighty where the surfers entered the water, paddling out between cars. No driving home on this day. Another wave swamped Route 1. I cut over dunes to find a road’s end leading Upcountry through the bungalows and was blocked by backyards. Cutting through sensitive plants, I shot south to the first bluff where things were worse. The fog came in through washed up trees where a village had floated out to suicide. I crawled under trunks and branches and saw two men pushing boats into the water to save themselves as the waves rose and blocked the way home south. I crawled back through a deeper thicket and saw a magazine picture of a man next to the mouth of a small tiger shark, dead on the sand. It looked like the shark ate the man. I climbed to safe ground and watched my car turn over and over in the surf below. I’d never seen that, cars whizzing past surfers paddling in crosswalks, and bathing cars.
Poem and Photograph by Lawrence Bridges
Lawrence Bridges is best known for work in the film and literary world. His photographs have recently appeared in Humana Obscura, Wanderlust a Travel Journal, the London Photo Festival. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Tampa Review, and Ambit. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). He created a series of literary documentaries for the NEA’s “Big Read” initiative, which includes profiles of Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff and Cynthia Ozick. He lives in Los Angeles.