August 2020
Alan Walowitz
ajwal328@gmail.com
Bio Note: Unfortunately, even during the pandemic, I'm back—somewhat irregularly—experiencing what some wit once called, "a good walk spoiled." My skills, age, and lack of native interest in golf limit me to a 9 hole municipal course named after a pretty good writer, Christopher Morley, who lived in these parts and said: "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."

Currently, I'm working on a chapbook, In the Muddle of the Night, with Betsy Mars. It will be published by Arroyo Seco Press. We'll see which happens first, its publication or me breaking 50 on the par 30 Christopher Morley course.

In Memory of My Golf Pro (Dan Orlik, 1953-2011)

                    “You can’t think and hit at the same time.”
                    —Yogi Berra

Instead of golf, which is killing me slowly,
I could finally see Venice, struggle for air 
in all that sinking beauty
and come home with the bends—
convulsions and projectile vomiting—
then gladly choose to die. 
 
These are some thoughts that hurt my head, 
though Dan Orlik said I was too dumb 
to juggle two at a time—
so it might be best I settle on one.
Dan never got how hard it is to learn to swing
when real life intervenes: 
head down; do the wash; mow the lawn; follow-through;
give those chickens one final count. 
Even simplified to zeroes and ones,
two tasks never occur simultaneously in one machine—
though Dan himself managed to smoke and golf
in what seemed to be a completely overlapping fashion 
and one, or maybe the other, finally did him in. 
 
He once suggested I try the Epley,
which could conquer the nausea 
that comes from thinking too hard—
and it wouldn’t hurt my swing.
Turned upside down 
I might clear my brain and those canals
some swear the Martians dug on an earlier visit
to make us earthlings feel more like home--
and can be used the same time by the damn gondoliers 
who make a racket in my brain with their songs of love—
which are always more about loss and longing, 
I know from vast experience happen concurrently,
without requiring me 
to think very much at all.

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.
Appears in The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, Truth Serum Press
©2020 Alan Walowitz
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