[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2006 15:11:56 -0700
(With apologies to Oliver Wendel Holmes)
Deep voice:
"We have shared the incommunicable experience of a highland dance
competition.
We have felt...
we still feel...
(it's the ringing in our ears)
the passion of the Sean Triubhas at its top."
To write at a dance competition,
with pipes playing a tune my Dad knows as
"The brun coo's broken out an' eaten a' the hay,'
is to fight noise,
to attempt to set things down
while others get up, get off the ground,
fling extension high-cuts out,
thump about, or do the dainty thing.
Dancers are my prospect.
Slim.
Hoping to hear less,
I remove my glasses.
concentrating forces,
as the military adage goes.
You know the feeling when you riffle through notes and nothing comes?
I take a deep breath,
scratch against the blare.
Stoics say that a bad round of golf builds character.
I think mine must by now be multi-storey,
with mezzanines,
hot and cold on all floors,
a basement with room for U-boat pens,
a penthouse at eye level with the Eigerspitz,
flocks of sheep baa-ing on the rooftop green,
the Sam Hill of buildings.
I'm not an awful golfer.
You've seen those:
the massive swing and the foozle,
the clods of dirt and grass
which, like gobs from a trebuchet,
accompany the ball,
that first chip... in the water,
the second... back across the hole,
the third... in the sand,
the fourth... more sand,
the putt--north would be the right mark--
which swerves instead towards adventure in China,
and rolls into the lake.
All this has toughened my moral fibre,
also the soles of my feet.
But there have been moments:
some drives hit with grace,
that six iron shot which halted beside the pin,
a birdie putt which rolled and rolled and rolled,
and fell
with glugging-in-a-bottle sound...
In addition to dutiful rounds of golf,
--dutiful because my father is visiting and the game is his religion--
this week we supported a friend who co-wrote "Rousseau's Dog,"
stood by him as he signed eighty copies to which
the Powell's lady added stickers,
certifying that the author had left his spoor.
He asked her whether this really helps sales.
"Yes," she said, "if you stack them near the door."
When close to the till,
Rousseau and Hume in spat,
sell
much like Jenn and Brad.
An end.
Golf and duty and friendship have brought me home.
That's the broon coo pretty much done with a' the hay.
You carry on.
Maybe a final note to say that:
Sean Triubhas is pronounced "Sean Trews,"
the Oliver Wendel Holmes ref. comes
from the soundtrack to Ken Burns,
"Civil War"...
and Emily won the cup!
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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