18

[James Rhys]

I actually think that this is an incredibly accomplished poem.
I know that some don't like the golf course references but for me they add a lovely incongruity and enhance the outsider perspective. Line length though is a pet peeve of mine. Choose your format and work within it as much as possible. If you must extend a line, do it for effect; beginning or end. Other than that, great poem.

.

Years before you tried to die,
we walked amongst the gifts of August:
rolling green, rolling golden
summer heat impressed 
upon dwindling twilight.

Dusted in fireflies,
a traveling dark
bound tree line and sky.
Suburbs softened on the hills, whispered,
then silenced.

We spent our nights on the golf-course,
blue asphalt weaving through Bermuda grass,
the cart path sliding in and out of shadow.

We never talked about how we’d grow
to miss those coyote-nights,
lounging in amber moonlight,
or about the pain growing, somewhere, far off and center
but we talked until

sprinklers squelched the air—
dozens, dotting the green,
each ticking In break-neck rhythm. 
The change was bigger than we knew. 

Water swung itself in circles.
Trees lifted from their roots.
Currents raked the rough,
foaming around the banks of sandtraps.

The fairway became a sink
With a par 4 drain, marked by a flag.


Dawn broke long ago.
Songbirds picked apart silence.
Dew formed, and rose,
and formed, and rose.
And the things that didn’t change sunk in the pit of the valley, 
in the cup of the 18th hole.