Brother Charlie drove the van
like a man with nowhere better to be -
one arm bronzed in the hot wind,
the other steady on the wheel
as we rattled past the fairgrounds
to the gravel lot at Harris Hill.
Tires ground the stones;
dust rose, a second sky.
We tumbled out -
a youth-group army,
pockets jingling,
the cool heft of real putters in our hands,
iron heads gleaming like oaths.
And there was Debbie -
fifteen,
her flowered blouse tucked neat
into low-rise jeans,
as though she’d stepped from a magazine
I was too young to buy.
I was thirteen -
old enough to master
the art of not-looking.
So I made myself absurd instead:
swinging too hard,
sending the ball off rails,
balancing on one leg like a stork,
singing under my breath
whatever tune would do -
all to see if she might laugh,
not at the others,
but at me.
But Debbie’s laughter drifted elsewhere...
to the girls beside her,
to someone taller, already driving.
Each giggle a pebble
tossed into a well
I’d never climb.
Still, the course glowed green
under the long gold evening.
Charlie called out scores,
the maples bowed in wind,
and from the gravel lot beyond the fence
the crickets began -
a thousand tiny hearts rehearsing forever.
Later, in the van,
I told my sister
the secret burning me hollow.
She threw her head back,
laughed like a crow,
and smacked my skull -
as if love were only
another bad shot,
a ball gone lost
in the weeds.
And yet, I carry it still:
Debbie’s blouse of pressed flowers,
the ache of two years
stretched wide as a canyon,
the foolish stork-dance of my youth.
Even now,
when gravel crunches underfoot
or I hear the clean metallic click
of putter to ball,
I think of Harris Hill -
how desire first rose
like a flare at dusk:
bright, impossible,
already falling
as it found the air.
GBS
1987
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