Professional Golfers Poem by Hans Ostrom

Each walks in front of a servant hauling
a bag of silver sticks. Each one selects
one stick and wags and wields it,
comically attacking a white nut on
the ground.A groomed pasture
without animals is the setting.

Sometimes there's a lost pond or
a piece of stolen beach among
the undulations.Even the old
golfers look like girls and boys,
with caps and visors and colorful
clothes. Apparently the ritual

is absurd but remunerative.
The Platonic Ideal is to never
strike the spherical nut, so that
your score is zero- no strokes
ofsilver sticks in a pastoral
frieze without lambs. Now up

out of one of the denatured
beaches comes a hermit-crab,
surrounded by a dry, green
ocean, blinking, bewildered,
not a member of the club.