Golf Museum, Regensburg

 

Spotted like eggs,

One bursting as if in birth,

Wrapped up like cheeses under dusty glass,

The golf balls wait,

In the World’s Best Golf Museum,

For the stroke that never comes,

The flight they never see –

The long, clear sail over fairway and green,

The clop in the cup, the cheer sent skyward,

The grateful hand retrieving the victorious friend.

 

They can wait all they like; the day’s not coming.

Golf has moved on; leather and feathers are out of style.

That calm, blue morning that they’re dreaming of

Will come for a million others – not for them.

 

But maybe this is happiness:

Something postponed.

Something put off, forever one day more,

Receding into a perfect future –

A perfect sunny day

With nothing to do but fly.

Potomac Summer

I was walking with the dead today,
Like every day,
And hearing their stories from another living man.
He told me of his mother,
Who taught him to brave the river,
To love and fear the river,
And come home safe at end of day.

He told me of his brother,
Who was also my father,
And how the two of them would shove off down
The all-consuming river,
The cold and boiling river,
The life-death-dealing river,
Where men are made and drowned.
With boyish love they beat the water,
Cleaving and churning, solemn in joy,
Flowing like blood, singing like water,
All down the long blank summer of their youth.

The younger brother died too young.
The older brother is older now.
The river is the same, hungry and surging,
Full of dreams and flotsam
And a thousand summer boys.

We walk with the dead, Tom and I, beside the river.
We remember them to life.
We remember ourselves.