The Caddy
It’s not that he’s too old, he just doesn’t want it,
the practice being enough and sometimes
making the cut. Top half of the leader-board
I see the hook before it happens, the certain
plunk in the water at the sixth. I unzip
another Dunlop with his name on it, the name
on my back these come back years that never come.
I’ve learned to grin. 3 star for years, then 5 for a season,
now I sleep in the van. That’s how it is. I step on
the other guy’s ball in the rough. I play him out
of the woods when his back’s turned, and I watch him
line up an impossible putt that can only go in,
and that slides by.
Which is why, today,
two under and in the headlines all week, the swing
at the short twelfth gripped my heart, gripped
the heart of the green, finding the pin. Bewildering.
The fans like the old days, the old master’s charge,
birdying every one of the last five holes to stand
three shots clear on the final tee. This is my life too.
I tell it like it is, play an iron to lay up short. But no,
he takes the driver and gives it all he’s got. Bewildering,
the sweet spot, and how it goes, wherever it goes,
that is a joy all of its own, and it’s clear today is ours.
Today is ours. I lift his bag and he smiles that smile
and walks on with the crowd and the cameras.
I lift his bag and I carry him, and he flies.