Joe tees off Sunday morning
rainbow dew splatter
hand to cap against steep sunray
ball flies home
a ginger putt on sequined green
Back in the front yard
Karen and Annie dress up pretty
pretend to be friends
while Cathy scrounges in the clover
for magic, or aberration,
too young to know
what’s normal and what’s cruel
The air's a little thick for Joe, the sod sucks
at his cart wheels, he slogs
down the fairway. The firs lean in,
whisper murder. The air
a little thick, too thick, sticks
in his throat, clogs
the back nine, the last
thing he sees
Two cops watch
Joe's daughters play
then go to tell their mother
Three girls line the stairs
and wait
while summer slides west
and fairy and other tales
come true
Rip away.
Comments
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First poem of yours that I read. Prose style with incisive insights into people. You are the third party observer to these things. You like plot in your poems, you do story lines very well. You like characters in your poems, you do people real well and you develop your characters to be growing or changing in the tone and actions they perform. You do express emotion quietly for your characters only in the drawing out of them. I do like this first poem and look forward to reading more.
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The firs lean in,
whisper murder.
Yah. Most excellent imagery.
I used to golf...long ago, most fervently. Usually in the rain (as if I had a choice). I think I must have seen the firs whisper 'murder' ...one can see much in the fog.
The ending is poignant.
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fourty years later
Karen and Annie still dress up pretty
pretend to be friends
while Cathy scraps paper bits
too old to know
what's cruel in the normal
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Oh I meant also to say that the last stanza is just so - well it makes you sort of stop in mid mastication of your chewing gum innit. There is an ambiguity in the penultimate stanza- it could be the cops or it could be the daughters that'tell their mother'.
That is a subtlety I almost missed.
Back again on a keyboard that works.
"too young to know
what’s normal and what’s cruel"
The weaving you do in this tapestry , it just keeps unfolding. I think I lost myself in the realities and the metaphors. Splendid and wicked.
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I had a season or two of golf back in 1991-92. My daughter once said 'I don't like you going to the golf Daddy, you might get killed'. I was a bit bemused by the logic until I realised she had got 'golf' and 'Gulf' (Desert Storm here was generally called 'The Gulf War'). Anyway this is a literal golf widow - tone set by the delicious 'hand-to cap- pun at the beginning. I found golf people awful. Probably becasue I have no competitive instinct, and they all had to get their handicap lower as it increased the size of their penises. I just played to my 24 and was always accused of being a bandit because they could not play to their 16s.
And the golf wives, yes pretending to be friends and bitching behind each other's backs- all hobbies have this, but somehow golf has its very own flavour of hypocrisy. I reckon it's because everyone cheats at provincial club level anyway. (hoho)
I like this the more I read it you know, but heck Zara, did he get a birdie at the ninth?
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