Golf at the Gates of Troy

2025 Collection

Contents

On Jericho

Our clan

Assembled hillside out of water’s view,

the elders smile, their dreams so long delayed

now bittersweet, their faded hope renewed,

for offspring- milk and honey lost to they. 


For battle,

Rules of engagement read and seals applied   

‘neath canopy and blessed by highest priest,

our best lieutenants arrayed at either side

protect our flanks or prevent a scared retreat.


Armored we,

In finest maille and garland to conquest show,

a lacey visor shields your painted face.

This linen skullcap guards against no blow  

yet hint of mystic confidence conveys. 


Hark now,

As martial music rises from spectacle below,

anxious hearts, now twice eighteen, advance on Jericho.

Advice from a Favorite Uncle

The angst would not vanish, that subtle doubt,

even after a year of cohabitation and the wedding.

It was less a knot in my stomach than some

vague sense of blunder.     

I had no rational complaint,

no criticism worth the worry,

and I chided myself for the constant questioning,                 

feeling as in a scene from Hamlet.

A friend recommended date nights, so we dated:

dinner, small talk, a movie and then a silent walk home.

Another friend took me to a men’s chat group,

which I left, impatient and sarcastic.

Then, in a quiet moment at a family holiday

I mentioned my malaise to a favorite uncle.

His advice after a nod and knowing chuckle? 

“Have kids.” 

A stubbed toe always helps a headache.

Miscarriage

The first miscarriage hit hard, ending three months of jubilation

after seven months of thermometers and charts and mechanical lovemaking.

But she had a support group and counseling

and her testy behavior was forgiven.

The second miscarriage was shattering, a life’s accumulation

of inadequacy sprung from her jack-in-the-box subconscious,

a tangle of guilt and self-doubt tripping her and that no one could unwind.

Her friends’ support waned, as did my interest in procreation.

A difficult year later, five months into a successful pregnancy,

she lost her balance while carrying a moving box

and belly-flopped hard, bouncing off her unborn child.

She rose in dread and clutched me for comfort or forgiveness.

I held her and said nothing, but felt that tangle of doubt

wrapping around me, empathy gone wrong.   

Empathy Gone Wrong

I was sympathetic at five hours into labor, walking with my wife,

stopping when she needed to, a hint of worry on her face.

I kept an arm available but did not hold hers,

for I knew that enlightened men help when asked, not before.

I was sympathetic at ten hours, at her bedside in the delivery room,

fear and doubt audible in her few words. Less enlightened,

I annoyed her with encouragement like “We can do this!”

while between contractions she thought, “We?”

I tried to hide my sympathy at fifteen hours, remembering that

an enlightened man should be empathetic, not sympathetic.

I wondered how to do that, unable to feel labor pains.

The best I could muster was a knotted stomach and some mild constipation.

I was rather unsympathetic at twenty hours, not from enlightenment

but from a shared sense of inadequacy

as she accepted an epidural after insisting for hours to go without,

her waning confidence weakening my own.

I had no sympathy at all after twenty-five hours,

when the dilation stalled and the OB warned of a c-section.

I was angry and disappointed, and ashamed for being so.      

I felt as my wife did, empathetic at last.

Wild Ride

While your girl is still small and a passive traveler,

absorbing but not understanding what she sees

and unable to express either interest or boredom,

when motherhood is smothering you and fatherhood is not yet of any use,

when your instinct to provide is falling to your instinct to roam,

take the kid to the annual car show downtown.

Walk the main drag lined with classics and exotics and hot rods.

Think of your adolescence and wonder why these car guys cling to theirs.   

Stop by the convertibles and remember that glorious week in your buddy’s Corvette,

as you slather the kid with sunscreen.

Admire the ’32 coupe’s engine, mirror‑shiny and without a smidge of road grime,

as you brush off a dropped binkie and hand it back to its owner.

Pause by the motorcycles, the European racers and leather-trimmed hogs,

and inhale the chrome polish and testosterone while you change a diaper. 

Study the suspension of the ’64 Lotus: “Simplify, then add lightness” was their motto. 

Repack the diapers, wipes, lotions and powders, snacks and juice boxes.

Wrestle with a bent stroller axle while stopped near a dragster

with massive rear slicks and tiny front wheels.

Think of the wild ride, just barely in control.

Bon Voyage

I am at the local harbor with a one-year-old in my arms,

admiring the yachts as I did so often before I married.

There are fiberglass sloops for the midweek regatta       

and ketches for island-hopping, huge race-built open-stern

beauties seldom sailed but often shown,

the rare schooner, and my favorite- a classic wooden yawl,

low and sleek, seemingly just in from Martha’s Vineyard

and surely owned by a Kennedy.

I recall my younger man’s dream to live aboard, a bohemian harbor rat

heading up the coast or down the coast as the season changed,

the boat both my shelter and escape pod

and me a sovereign power on the open sea,

my crew of shapely young pirates picked up dockside,

living out their own fantasies before stifling adulthood settles in.

My daughter and I watch as a boat leaves the channel and hoists sail.

I wave and utter “Bon Voyage,” and the kid mimics the best she can,

her wave more of a grasp, a fist opening and closing as if to grab a toy,

the only hand motion that she has mastered.  And there we stand, landlubbers

practicing “Bon Voyage” and grasping at the yacht as it sails into the sunset.

Donuts with Steinbeck

If your wife is traveling and your daughter is too young to tattle,

rise before dawn and head to the culvert beyond Ellwood,

beyond Westend, beyond prudence.   

Crouch low and walk through with a dim headlamp to leave be the sleepers,    

until you reach the sandy mesa at Pacific’s Edge. 

Spread a blanket, light a fire, and wait.   

In January on this south‑facing coast, the sun rises over the ocean

and sets over the same ocean, confounding expectations,

and both the sun and expectations remain low all day. 

Think of your wife on the redeye, the fighting during the week,

the imagined plane crash and guilt-free riddance,

until your daughter stirs and ends your morbid reverie

and you find guilt waiting for you after all.

Let the kid wander to pick up shells and sea glass,

and to wonder as the transient camp awakens. 

Bring a book to read when she collapses back to sleep.   

And bring a box of donuts to share,

the three-variety pack cheap and stale from the bakery outlet,

comfort food for the unhoused and your admission ticket to the park. 

Shake well before serving to sugar coat the chocolate, waxy and dark.

Mac and Cheese and Therapies

On a Sunday out with Dad, the kid and I

take lunch at a struggling sandwich shop

where the menu includes mac-and-cheese

and the overworked staff ignores us.

I watch my daughter, the nascent assemblage artist,

arrange sticky yellow noodles on the tines of her fork

and laugh as she waves them around.

I hand her some olives to broaden her palette

and grin as she inserts the noodles into the olives,

then mashes them all onto the table with a saltshaker.

My grin goes flat as I realize that I am encouraging

the same table behavior that I criticize at home,

the behavior that my wife and I fight over most nights,

the six o’clock feeding just one more task that needs finishing

so that I can move on to the next.

A pair of young adults sit down at the adjacent table,

their looks and manner signaling that they are somehow impaired.

My kid entertains them by blowing bubbles

through a straw in her strawberry milk.

They ask her name and identify it to be of Hebrew origin,

shared by a come-and-gone movie starlet,

trivia that no normal person their age should know.

As I start the long cleanup, I overhear them discuss

obsessive behavior and anger management,

and outline in fluent social worker jargon

the path they must follow to wholeness.

Feeling an uncomfortable kinship, I mutter

“There but for the grace of God…,”

then count my blessings and leave a big tip.

Road Rage with Child

When you need to spell your wife from childcare

but you are preoccupied and resentful,

load the kid in the car and drive up the coast

for some recreational festering.

Let the rumble lull the kid to sleep,

suspended animation for an hour,

your time alone to fantasize or pout. 

Rerun old arguments and compose new endings.         

Practice the lines like a poetry reading

and cache them for later use.

Bask in your bitterness and remember:

The joy is in the journey.

Medical School

When your daughter is out of diapers but not yet in preschool,

when your wife needs a day off from both the kid and you,

kill the morning at the children’s science museum.

Not the high-rent destination downtown with its dignitary board of directors

and membership drives and high-tech exhibits,

but the low rent converted warehouse on the edge of the barrio,

where the exhibits are built from garage scraps,

a mock rocket ship with busy-box switches broken by gleeful human puppies,

and a whispering gallery in which the young boys holler “¿me oyes?” 

Where the snack shop and gift shop are the same

and the educational merchandise comprises rubber bugs

or rubber balls with embedded bugs.

Watch from a corner as your child follows the older patrons,

pushing cash register buttons at the math-at-the-mercado exhibit,

trying on a flight attendant’s hat at the aviation exhibit,  

and leaving glowing handprints on the thermal imaging wall,

imprinted by fifty other sniffling kids that hour.

When your child slumps near the door rubbing her eyes,

leave for lunch- mac and cheese for her and a burrito for you.

Consider what to report to your wife: clever observations by your daughter,

the grinning admiration of her curls by the straight-haired mothers.

And consider what not to report: the shared churro, and the beer that washed it down.

On the drive home consider your child’s academic future and germ-ridden present. 

Medical school.

Chick Magnet

As I walked my child down State Street, feeling self-conscious

and emasculated, the kid leaning forward in her stroller,

her legs swinging and her wild curls blowing,

I felt eyes on me and imagined the snickering

of guys passing by, their silent thoughts “Never me!” 

I nodded to a female colleague from work, embarrassed,

noting her smile that seemed to say, “Not the boss now, are you?”

A young woman in front of me, flanked by two athletic-looking guys,

glanced back and stopped, then tugged at her companions’ arms

and uttered those girl squeals that usually drive me nuts. 

But I paused to let the woman admire the child, realizing

that I had something that her two studly buddies didn’t.

I prolonged my conversation with the young woman just to flaunt it.

As the trio finally walked on, I thought what a great chick magnet

a small kid could be, and imagined a rent-a-kid concession

next to the beach-side bike and surrey rentals.

I imagined pickup lines to use: “She’s just my niece” or “I’m babysitting.”

I imagined a book of such lines, sold at the concession counter

along with realistic kid care accessories.

I wondered: Would that run afoul of child labor laws? Human trafficking? 

Could a good doll suffice?  Or an AI-enhanced mechanized doll?

And I admired the young woman’s rear, feeling not so emasculated.

Glues and their Uses

Use airplane glue for broken plates               

decoupaged in preschool tones,

displayed for years with maternal pride

alongside artless childhood poems.    

 

Use white glue for a baseball bat       

repurposed as a hunting tool

and splintered on a mammoth’s skull,

enforcing would-be caveboy’s rule.  

Let kids mend spousal arguments,

a marriage-saving living glue                        

for ruptures caused by angry words,

repaired with giggling whoop-de-doo.  

 

But sex is still the glue to choose                  

when teens serve no adhesive use.

Love Oil

Love oil.  I bought it on impulse, advertised to revitalize.

But the instructions are poor.  Who gets oiled?

Not her- that would imply fault.  Not me- that would confer privilege.

Do we need counseling just to ensure a fair frolic?

Maybe it’s meant for the bedsprings, as if we had the passion to squeak.

What if the kids heard?  They’d laugh, incredulous, and wonder why we bother.

Yeah, I’ll oil the bedsprings.

“Honey, I oiled the bedsprings.  Now can we fool around?”

Imagine me asking that. 

Better to oil my jaw, loosen the words.

Whoa, too much!

“Honey, I’m sick from this bitterness, this slow, awful frosting.

Sick from the resentment concealed for peace.”

Love oil is truth serum.  “Use sparingly” the label reads.

Maybe I’ll just oil that squeaky door on the fridge.

It is also cold and closed, but what’s inside

sustains.

An Astronomer’s Lament

I have studied the moon, learned her phase and period,

her craters vivid in twilight’s boundary passing ‘cross her face.

I have learned that her darkest nights foretell storms,

a time for lowered expectations and heightened patience.

In the waxing glow we are relieved and giddy, lunatic,

and bathed when the moon is full, according to ancient command.  

“Blessed are you, Lord, who has not created me a woman.”

I search for sympathy in this morning prayer.

I have studied the sun, my life heliocentric,

my passage through the heavens measured only relative to hers.

I have observed her dark spots and corona, observed her spectrum, the colors of her life.

Her arcing flares bring static and power failure,

and fluorescent splendor known only to those who venture into frigid climes.

I have watched her tugging on rocky children to keep them bound,

Mercury and Venus racing to break free, too close and too hot for life.

Exhausted now, her core spent and cooling, instability and collapse imminent,

or perhaps a nova, her ashes scattered, the heavy elementary stuff of new life.

I have studied the Cosmos, failed to count the stars,

this extended family so old the matriarchs are known only by extrapolation,

a family born from nothing, grown complex and chaotic, beautiful,

yet mostly unseen, the dark matter also known only by extrapolation.

Will we collapse back to nothing, or expand to infinite dispersal?

Either path leaves naught but a cry into vacuum, an astronomer’s lament.

Cedars of Lebanon

We were not beautiful, but we spoke of beauty,

of pastures green or brown and vineyards on the hillside,

of ideas and art and music, and of hope, the path we would walk together,

the home we would build, a roof wide and strong

with beams carved from the cedars of Lebanon.

We set to work, excited and resolute,

Confident in our plans and in ourselves.

At night we came together to share our bounty,

and we shared our troubles, our empathy soothing but not solving.

Trouble is boundless, but empathy is not,

and in time we turned from each other, depleted.

We tended our own business, but we did not tend our own vineyard.

Our dreams, once of passion and laughter, turned anxious.

And though our words remained civil, our thoughts turned mocking:

“My King, sword at his thigh.”  “My beloved’s hair, like a heard of goats.”

We thought of the past, of queens and concubines and shepherds in their tents,

thoughts creeping and corrosive, gnawing like bark beetles in the cedars of Lebanon.

And we withdrew into our shells, defensive.

Our necks, once proud and straight as the Tower of David,

shrank retracted, our vision narrowed,

our senses alert only to attack.

And we fell silent, the voice of the turtle.

Rhapsody for Guitar and Whimper

This composition has gone awry, my lovely rhapsody for guitar and voice,

the bass line now just a primitive rhythm, instinctual

and thumping dull like a bad habit, like an old argument.

The melody pitched in a nonconforming key, jazz for the unquiet,

a scale to gauge my progress or weigh my worth,

a once-perfect fourth, suspended now for disturbing the piece,

and a minor third, a minor flaw, just a finger’s slip to sadness.

The trivial lyric, phony and cliché,

abandoned for scat, abandoned for murmur, abandoned for whimper.

Too long, this rhapsody now a dirge in fifty-four measures.

Scorch Marks

I’ve never spoken the word divorce to my wife,          

and though I often fantasize about being free, it is never by court decree.

Rather, I imagine some blameless separation by natural disaster,

or economic failure, or even her infidelity.

I suppose I think it better to be left than to leave,

better to be a cuckolded chump than a quitter,

or maybe a chump in need of some sympathy.

“My wife?  Well, I don’t talk about it much, her running off with that actor wannabe…”

“My wife?  No, that’s okay, I suppose it does me good talking about it,

her tour in Iraq and the PTSD…”

“My wife?  No, no, we were close, and I miss her. 

It was a work thing, her job with SETI…well, one night

she just disappeared, nothing but some scorch marks on the ground…”

Golf at the Gates of Troy

In our tenth year of battle, weary and with divorce on our minds,
she gave me clubs and a golf bag, with a card that read “no balls.”
I did not golf, and wondered if she hoped for a self-inflicted injury,
or if she viewed golf widowhood as the next best thing to merry widowhood.

A craving to whack things overcame my better judgement
and I took the clubs to the range, where I wrecked a five iron and an elbow.
I returned home, blistered and humbled, and vaguely appreciative of my wife.
Keeping that to myself, I went back the next day.

In time, I braved a twilight round alone and finished in the dark.
When my wife suggested lessons I refused, stiff-necked,
preferring to blunder before an anonymous crowd
than to admit my failings to a pro, and by proxy to her.

And the siege continued, a cold war of silent pride and stubbornness,
until I found a browned out note in the golf bag, long overlooked:

Once we were Argonauts, comrades in arms, so heroic in victory
Now we are masons, this wall built between us obscuring our glory

I finished the round hitting wildly, and drank long at the nineteenth hole
while the invading words breached my defenses.
I took flowers home that day, now twenty years back,
and I’m still duffing, hitting seventy-two with holes to go,
so far from par.

Epilogue

We are as granite, you and I, crystallized by pressure and time,

the searing glow of our youth gone dark,

shaped by a cruel sculptor and smoothed by an eon of storms,

we remain, exposed for all to touch,

and in our nakedness, touch them.