A elegy people who still keep score at mini-golf
and all the places the stars are hiding.

No one who writes poems 
on paper towels has ever believed
we live on a golf course--
Black gates and moon rovers
teach us to forget that God painted
us fluorescent orange, blue,
and green and thought we were
both beautiful and so so
funny-- 
Like lopsided ice cream cones--

That place is for 
people who lock their belt buckles
like dictionaries. Those are the
people who have mistaken 
the stars for white golf balls--
Short men who believe in hitting
things to make a sound-- believe
in drums faces and 
think that wind chimes sound
like screaming instead of the
laughter untangled from 
the necklace of the skyline--
What a world to believe God would give us
mallets to hit a jar of fire--

They believe the stars can
only go 18 directions-- 17
of which are only forward-- 

People aren't usually aware of
how funny and mundane space is.
How much Neptune is like a spatula--
how much gravity stirs like a wooden
spoon and licks the edges
of the bowl--

The moon is a quiet thing--
A girl who wears thick glasses
because God borrowed her eyes
for Orion's belt.
A muffin or a pierogie.

He cracks open constellations in my mother's cast iron pan
on Sunday mornings. 
God believes in mini-golf. 
He believes in the 
absurd glory of animatronic Gorillas 
who defend the twelfth hole-- that
there's nothing more 
depressing than being on
par in a game of mini golf game
with your brothers--

Boldly nudge the neon green
planet we call earth into 3rd
hole-- the cavern where our
bodies climb into the night sky--
we've lived in the windmill 
and cultivated fake grass like wheat fields--
we've watched your brother's Mercury
plop into the blue soup of the fountains--
that's what nets are for--
and if you've never stood
waist deep in blue
soup then you might as well 
keep score at mini-golf.

Some nights God lives
in the fake lighthouse-- the same
size as heaven. He pretends his
world is as small as the mini golf course
even though it really is.