Poem
 
 
In the beginning
was nothing,  
but the void,
where soon would be water and earth
and rumor of heaven.
The word came later— 
and some proclaim God.  
Odd, but none I know
would shout that name
above the bleeding mess was left.
So God left me with this;
this, too, I claim,
I fashioned
out of nothing.





The Golf Poem

     The golf links lie so near the mill
     That almost every day
     The laboring children can look out
     And see the men at play.
                -Sarah Cleghorn, The Golf Links

My wife says J’accuse partly in jest. 
She means: You get lost on the golf course--
or was it a woman? 
I figure she ought to be happy
not having to see me fastened to the desk
troubling the 23rd version of this poem no one will read 
because golf’s a waste of good time 
and perfectly useful space
and there’s no poetry in it.

I like to spend time in it alone, 
make my way the order I want,
which is fine so long as I don’t hold up play.
No one cares what you do in poems,
but golf doesn’t like when you break the rules. 
I try to walk gingerly there.

My wife wishes I’d care as much about the yard.
She insists, You can’t make a poem from golf,
but you can take a scythe 
to the weeds out back and wield it like a 7.
I never tell her how in school we had to memorize The Golf Links,
and old Mrs. Koehler made us boys promise 
not to take up that cold, stupid game— 
and the girls never to marry 
any frozen idiot who did.