For Roger
Most are forgotten before you reach the next tee.
Encounters, not as brief as they might have been;
A minutiae of drives, chips and scrambled putts.
But certain holes resurface in your mind at night:
That stillness at the pitch of a perfect swing,
Rushes and swamp, trees split by shafting light,
Pussy Willow billowing wild in some ditch.
The instant when a white ball soared or rolled
And life elsewhere momentarily ceased to exist.
Often you lie awake, longing to replay some shot
With what fragment of sense you've since picked up.
But you would happily repeat every single mistake.
For the time you carried the lake and yellow furze
Onto a fairway curving past trees placed to punish
Shots that avoided taking on the nest of bunkers.
You watched your ball rise, like a bird taking fright,
And get lost against the blue of an evening skyline,
Where you were lost too, inside the arc of its flight.