My butt all bone against curb, I’m anxious for
the golf cart’s cushion, clubs tipped over on the lawn
like a giant squid autopsy in progress. By and large
cephalopods are smart enough to stay wet.
First rule of survival: pick your battleground.
Most protomammals went inland, others did a
one-eighty, dunked back under, lost their hard-
won legs jogging by in lavender hot pants….
That’s immaterial to the issue at hand:
whales, only hours to save them, harpooning
banned in 1986, superseded on the sly. Surprise,
surprise, Japan and Norway, two countries
I’ve either visited or would like to again.
Terra firma has its pluses. Minuses include
the petrified huddle in wine cellars at Pompeii
that Picasso took a pass on as tableau; the thought
of the skeleton cupping her toddler’s skull
could scoop out your heart if you let it.
Bunkers, a.k.a. sand traps, are a cinch
to hit, they crackle in midday like tinfoil.
Iceland’s overrun with health nuts despite
the literacy rate, my twosome buddy swears
that on islands the rehydrating’s faddish.
A Jeremiah with his irons, more obtuse than acute,
he mans a vehicle with a sizable trunk.
Water can be a hazard too, as when Vesuvius lit up
like a question mark and the pyroclastic wave
vaporized H2O molecules in every body
turned glyph. Lilac for the girl’s pants, I amend
my original assessment. So many things can go wrong
when you swim recreationally in the ocean,
that’s why I haven’t. Take the U.S.S. Indianapolis,
Robert Shaw by all accounts ad libbing
“Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain”—
that was sharks, but the same medium, amplifying
military sonar, forcing our cetacean cousins
to choose sides, some ramming astray
onto shores of particulate glass. Obsidian’s black
obscures the violets crucial for its form,
in temperatures of hundreds of degrees.
Always late for tee-off, he cradles dirty looks
when denied the right to play through,
my fingers crossed for a cooler, uneventful round.
Stencilled on a dinghy, greenpeace shatters spray,
beads the lens, Handycam with jerky frame
separating whaler from prize. I mean violence,
the roar loosened when we score a hole in one.