‘incomprehensible, incomprehensible the multitude of visible things’ – Czesław Miłosz

I was drinking gin
at an airport bar in California, I think,
awaiting a flight
to Denver.

They were showing the golf
at St. Andrew’s.
It was evening in Fife,
and the sun was lobbing shadows

over the green at the 18th, which means
it must have been mid-morning, my time.
Too early for gin?
Time is nothing to the true believer.

[The rules of time differ
on either side of security.
One becomes a part of the process.]
Besides, I could have come from Australia.

Growing up on the east coast of Scotland
I was known to wield a golf club as a child
and so deeply feel the way the late-afternoon sunlight
touches the grass in that part of the world.

I pretended I was someone else as I bought another drink
for my anonymous companion.
She soon lets slip her name; Amanda.
Trouser-suited Amanda: it is as impossible for me

to feel completely at home on this earth
as it is for my eyes
to totally absorb the proportions of your body.
This window-seat life that separates me

from the game I’m under orders to describe:
Fourteen clubs,
one ball,
and no reason why.