Golf Course in February

Golf Course in February

Having always wondered
about the golf course,
set apart from this drab
workingclass neighborhood
beckoning like a better world 
with fields of electric green,

I slip across the chain
and follow the cartpath
littered with last years' scorecards
and winding like a labyrinth
until I am lost
like some walker 
in the land of the dead.

For now the fairways				
are brown and threadbare
except for occasional 
tufts of wild onion;
the tees and greens
rest quiet under 
quilts of straw.
The artificial stream
has gone bone-dry
revealing its gravel bed.

I wander on--
the frozen rough crunching
underneath my boots,
wind smarting against 
my cheeks--
past rows of classic oaks
which stand gaunt and spectral
like old men
squinting at the grey sky
debating possibilities 
of rain or snow or worse . . .

I stop for breath:
a hawk appears from out
the grey ganglia of limbs
like an image of eternity
reproving me
and my trespass--
he hovers motionless
marking me,
then glides silently
down the fairway
in search of prey . . .