Laura Jensen - Shelter

Laura Jensen’s third book of poetry, Shelter, is long out of print. Bad Boats is still available if you surf around long enough, and Memory was just reissued in 2006 from Carnegie Mellon. So, as part of my personal reclamation project, here’s a poem from Shelter, which I, thankfully, have a copy of.

Golf



It seems always two years ago
no matter which two years
I was a child
thinking I had grown.

Two years ago I was playing
solitaire in the frightening room.
At the center of each card
laid out on a brown table
was a pink ceramic lady.

Outdoors the snow
fell unpardonably.
What a child I was.

I could not speak intelligently
and found cards in the gutter.

And another memory.
My only time on the golf course
we whacked at balls.

I sat on the hill
watching the slope
slope down to the water.

I could not play golf automatically,
and having no other opportunity,
I never did. In the evening light,
no words for it—such a long slope—

to roll down it over
and over, the grass
long, thick, and cool.

What a child I was.
Other worlds were possible.
Other worlds were likely.