At 50, I learned to surf in the warm waters off Puerto Viejo,
A gift I’d promised myself if ever I flew the six hours across the ocean.
My birthday plus one day found me old enough to balance
Feet, thighs, hands and shoulders with a bouyant survivor’s jubilation.
On the day, the actually turning day, I wept for journeying so far,
Directionless so it was after all, despite the doing drive of delivery,
Tenacity and 1000 steps winding a mountainous book-lined stairway,
To the peak that, having surfaced from the well, revealed a bottomless sea,
The very one upon which I defied gravity and gods sailing to the sands
Upon a finned polyurethane prosthetic to landlocked quinquagenarians.
In the gaze of the other 