Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

Aurora at Kvalvika

The surfers at Kvalvika mimic
what’s happening above,
I mean the aurora in winter.
How they paddle like crazy
chasing a swell until they’re
sucked into another world.
The true gift then is to ride the wave,
while taking in what’s happening around you.
If you look down through the glassy water,
you’ll see that the sand and the stones
are perfectly still. You’re not moving at all.
How can that be?
Only when you’re thrown at the end
are you hurtling forward.
The same is true for electrons
that catch the solar wind;
they ride to the breakwater
at the speed of light
before they’re crushed by the wave
held down and rag dolled,
in luminous swirls of light and surf.
That’s what’s happening down there –
ghosts are gasping for air,
that’s how the surfers at Kvalvika
see themselves in the sky.

Laurence O’Dwyer’s has published three collections of poetry, Catalan Butterflies (Templar, 2022), The Lighthouse Journal (Templar, 2020) and Tractography (Templar, 2018). His awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, the Yeovil Poetry Prize, the AUB International Poetry Prize, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Project Award, and a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from Trinity College Dublin.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx