POETRY: My first trip to America in four years and a friend invites me to play golf in the desert / Nathaniel Cairney
My first trip to America in
four years and a friend invites
me to play golf in the desert
by Nathaniel Cairney
Long par five, nasty dogleg.
I stop to apologize to a tanktop
man for hitting his house.
It’s America, so you never know.
He thanks me, says nobody ever
apologizes. At the airport, ash
comes down like snow. Wildfire
in the canyon. There’s a Catholic
priest in our foursome. It’s a
civilized game, so I talk about
the time I played with an imam
and the two times I played
with a rabbi, but never the two
together, not yet. The priest stops
to take a shot. No one says a word
during his backswing. Afterwards
I confess I’ve been lucky to live
in the age of flushing toilets.
Hashtag blessed, agrees
the tanktop man. Air conditioning
and recliners. Cheap gasoline.
Nuclear deterrence and eighteen
greens in the desert. No one brings
up icebergs. Each of us brought
a car. Asphalt shimmers behind us.
Smoke blackens the horizon.
