Blue Blood
A poem about friendship and secrets in a country club locker room.
A ninety-six-year-old
Black man named Amos
shines shoes in the clubhouse
at the blue blood golf course
placing footwear carefully on racks
near monogrammed foot lockers
with members’ names printed.
Amos greets the course record holder
who made the cut on a PGA Tour
front page, Golf Digest Magazine
thirty years prior with a 147-yard
hole-in-one on a short par three.
They talk about wives, home cooking,
Jesus, hunting dogs and fishing holes,
money, politics and threats of war.
Amos smiles while reaching
out for a ten-dollar tip
fuel for a two-tone Oldsmobile,
hush money to protect white
secrets from the ghetto.
John Charles Griffin is a poet, a spoken-word and recording artist, photographer and 1984 graduate of Valdosta State University with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He has published three books at Snake Nation Press: “After the Meltdown,” nominated for a 2016 Georgia Author of The Year Award in Poetry, “Dirt Road Visionary,” featured at the 2019 Finster Festival with a spoken-word performance in the Paradise Garden Chapel, and more recently, “Junkyard Love Letters,” nominated for the 2021 Georgia Author of The Year Award in Poetry. He is a native of Macon, Georgia.