False Memories

Athens, Georgia

April 30, 2011

I close my eyes and even now

I see the ball roll in the hole

it fell just left of center line

to save a score, it’s only right

my swings were crisp, the strokes were pure

in execution, strong and sure

I see it still as plain as sin

so why this feeling of despair

which haunts my memory of that hole?

Though memory’s strong, it’s also wrong:

in fact that ball slid by the cup

no matter what my call is now.

Though memory seeks to serve the soul

and that is kind, we need a break

but we must also serve what’s so

and cruel facts must play a role

in worlds that we construct inside.

I cannot hide in poetry,

this is no longer metaphor –

the ball fell in or it did not

it’s not some blurry quantum cat

awaiting its ambiguous fate:

dead or not I need the fact.

But now I question what is true

and what I hold in memory:

did that heron never speak

and share his sacred soul with me?

Did I never stride the high

savannah under blazing sky,

or never skied through snowy Banff

to bathe my soul in Lake Louise?

And was I not an engineer

who wrote in Fortran: IF-THEN-ELSE,

to have the code go through the THEN

or pass it by and do the ELSE?

But now I write my code in lines

that do no more than mark my time

in another world where golf balls drop

to serve what’s right, no matter what.