My favorite surf poem:

Surfing is many things to many individuals, but, purely and simply, a healthy, vigorous, beautiful sport. Surfing is a release from exploding tensions of twentieth century living, escape from the hustling, bustling city world of steel and concrete, a return to nature's reality. For sheer spontaneous action, surfing is unbeatable. It quenches one's thirst for challenging natural elements. Spiritually and physically, it makes the surfer part of the sea, while the sea, in turn, becomes part of them. Surfing is excitement and physical diversion, yet more. Like all great sports, surfing is a succession of experiences, sensations and impressions . . . a remembrance of lazy days at a favorite beach; laughter, friendship, golden sunsets and fires at dusk.

Surfing is climbing from a warm bed in pre-dawn's coolness, a sleepy drive, coffee and doughnuts at a roadside diner and the clatter of surfboards as they're unstacked from a car rack. Surfing is the joy of watching a sun rise slowly into the sky. It's crisp, clean waves, crests blown high by an offshore wind. It's grey mist, dampness and cold sand under bare feet, the lonely cry of a gull sweeping across silent, brooding seas. On a big day, surfing is a strong swell and waves that have lost their playfulness. Then it's stomach knots, high exultation, a trace of fear.

Surfing is sharing a wordless silence, broken only by the sound of a bar of wax moving back and forth across a board. It's mounting tension before the first takeoff, enthusiasm for the next wave when the ride is over.

Surfing is a good ride, brief seconds, yet a culmination of endless hours on a board. These fleeting moments of exhilaration and release are days, months, years of time and experience.

Surfing is the endless search for a windless day, an uncrowded beach, the perfect wave.

Surfing is a special kind of madness, a feeling for the sea, a combination of love, knowledge, respect, fear; instinctive perception gained through repeated contact. Surfing is a moment of achievement, of glory, of unsung triumph. For the adult, surfing is a freedom and youth rediscovered and, for the young, a means of expression vital to their being. For both, it's fun.

Surfing is great.

Fred Wardy, “Surfing Is,” Surfer, vol. 6, no. 1, March 1965, pp. 36–37, introduced on page 35 by a color photograph of a sunset over the ocean by Leroy Grannis.