March 2017
Joyce S. Brown
jsbrown1939@gmail.com
I’m a retired English teacher (high school and college) with 53 years of marriage, two children, four grandchildren, one dog. I’ve had poems in Poetry, The American Scholar, The Tennessee Review, Yankee, and others! 


​​Villanelle to a Golfer


Are we engaging in the same affair?
To you, cigars and brandy by the fire.
To me life seems more Hardy than Voltaire.

I want to breathe Pacific Ocean air.
You want to use the golf swing you’ve acquired.
Are we engaging in the same affair?

I walk in rain; my head and feet are bare--
the opposite of your correct attire.
I must be out of Hardy, you Voltaire.

I walk in storms enough to scare
a golfer into singing in the choir.
Are we engaging in the same affair?

You beckon me to rise and climb the stair,
and I see you beginning to perspire.
Now you’ve become more Hardy than Voltaire.

It heightens the dilemma to compare;
the throbs of noontide are what I desire.
We are engaging in the same affair:
the dark, the light of Hardy and Voltaire.
© 2017 Joyce S. Brown
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