They told me, Carswell Golf Club, they told me you’d gone bust –
My twenty five years membership’s been blown away like dust.
I grieve as I remember how twice a week or more
I played with high ambition – but an even higher score.
–
I’m having nightmares nightly about rewilding the course –
I see badgers chipping hedgehogs to greens submerged in gorse –
But long may Carswell Seniors, the Castaways, convene
For golf, and at the nineteenth hole, for toasts to what has been.
–
Mark Baker (with apologies to Callimachus and William Johnson Cory)