John O'Donnell was born in 1960. A barrister, he was educated at UCD, King's Inns and Cambridge. He has had poems published in a variety of journals and anthologies in Ireland and abroad. He won the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Award for Poetry in 1998. This year, he won the Listowel Writers' Week Prizes for Best Individual Poem and Best Collection. His poem 'Nighthawks' is shortlisted for this year's SeaCat National Poetry Competition.
Later, on a summer's evening, we drive out
to my father's club to play. "It's time you took up
golf," he says, meaning that it's time I spent
less time in the pub. We park among the sleeping
chrome and head for the first tee. Swathes of green
and figures clustered everywhere, but all I can see
is my father as he steps up to plant the ball: a pause
and then he hits off neatly; short, but straight and true.
My turn. I draw a sword from the borrowed bag
and wait. "The club is an extension of yourself,"
he reminds. I feel the five-iron go limp in my hands.
"Don't try to hit too far too soon." I am going to show
him and the watching world; I am going to smash
this ball onto the moon. Blood-thunder; the club-head
hurtles past. I gaze hopefully a hundred yards ahead
then back down at my feet: the ball, unmoved, still there.
This is called "a fresh air". Another go; the ball squirts
twenty yards out left. Already I am struggling to keep up
with him, listening to the same advice I seem to have
been hearing all my life: Take it easy. Instead of getting
closer I am further away than ever, slashing and
hacking through scutch grass, or looking for a ball
I'll never find in the deep rough: in trouble everywhere.
Keep your head down. He's out on the fairway,
alone; I can hear the small clean thwock as he swings
and follows through, the same thing every time,
mechanical, unrelenting like the arguments
we have each time we meet. Hummed snatches
of Sinatra as he waits for me to join him, so distant still.
Go back slowly. I am counting once again the atrocities
of our wars, the years of peace that might have been
now lost to us as surely as those dimpled spheres
long forgotten, nesting in the gorse. The light fading,
he turns to me: Let's finish here. He bids me come
out from the weeds and thorns and I do, ending up
beside him on the edge. He plops a new ball
down, then steps behind and puts his arms round me.
I feel his hands closing over mine. Try holding it
like this. The club purrs, lofts the ball into the dusk.
So close then, the two of us; almost close enough to kiss.