See the Poem (Below) Inspired by This Photo

Below is a poem by David Ray inspired by the above photograph. It is called “World Within World”:

Why has this picture
so long haunted me—

an American airman
on the stern deck

of an aircraft carrier
practicing golf,

his club in the air
about to be swung

as if he were back
home on the green?

One golf ball at a time
he lofts into the wake

churning in the blue
Persian Gulf, a white

road to the far horizon,
one sea at a time—one

war at a time, the duty
to fill up the sea with one

little world at a time.