My literary musings and creations
I am far behind
on my opportunities to use
those three words
so often thought, infrequently heard
I find myself wishing
for one more hour
with my parents
wishing I could go back with
my kids back to a younger age
to make up the deficit there
to listen a few moments to a friend
when I didn’t have the time
and my wife to whom
I can never say enough
I love you
The yard looked stunning yesterday.
When I finished mowing,
I trimmed round the roses,
headed the geraniums,
and walked to the street to look back on my work.
The house, as grey as
springtime fog,
with sage green shutters
was trimmed in gold by the brush of afternoon sun;
all now just a memory.
My yard is there, somewhere
beneath a pile of
cars, shingles, fence posts,
the house an open dance floor,
no orchestra in sight.
Perched like a giant bird
in the stub of a tree,
my refrigerator still holds yesterday’s leftovers
and eggs for today’s breakfast,
forever scrambled.
From a shredded branch of a magnolia tree
a mockingbird sings his joy:
for the bright sunshine,
for living another day.
I nod and sigh,
and a hesitant smile swells from deep within me
as I must,
in spite of everything,
join his celebration.
For our fallen military – Veterans Day
Fair Sunday morning
port of pearls
a child draped within mother’s arms—
battleship quays strung and fastened
swarms of flies disturb awaken
a sleeping force gathers itself
to swat them away
fighter planes perched tip to tip
flightless, fall easy prey
Arizona, hit by piercing flare
ripped, gutted by stowed magazine
settles to her watery bed
as hundreds float stillborn within
Desperate dancers
search for space between bullets
a twisting, arching ballet
to tympani fortissimo, staccato snare
hot bite of shrapnel in treble screams
between oil and flames
a human log jam crowds the sea
with glass eyes and waxy fingers
wayward toe
torn lip that last kissed mother goodbye
others lie on stretchers
awaiting trial by triage
Uncle Roy’s dreams Billy’s future generations dissolved
suspended by marriage of powder and steel
in frothy, bleeding brine
I see the images as clear
as if yesterday
though I don’t remember much
from yesterday
My granddad took us
my brother and me
to a little fishing hole he knew
where there were sure to be fish
Our tackle – a cane pole
silk line, small hook
and a box or two of
tasty-looking worms
I saw the chuckle in
my brother’s eye
and was ready to learn
the science of the game
how to thread the worm
just so – to keep it on the hook
right away I felt a tug
and pulled to set the barb
my brother, excited,
wrapped his line around
an overhead branch, fish attached
we soon retrieved the three inch beauty
we filled a stringer with hand-sized
blue-green-gold bream
they flavored our afternoon
with pride
few afternoons since have
been spent so well
sharing fun and love
and a banquet of fish
I remember that night
when I was just eight
and Mom was passed out with
the glass still in her hand.
It plays in my head like a
scary movie
that never ends.
As I lay in my bed on
the edge of sleep,
a knife of dim light
washed over my pillow and disappeared.
I trembled as I listened to him
breathe in the dark.
*
He had never come into my room,
this man who lived with Mom.
He sat on my bed and the springs
shrieked in protest as
he placed his hand gently on my chest,
driving tears from my eyes,
the breath from my lungs,
and leaving a stain of fear
on my nightgown
where he touched me.
*
Still quiet,
he pulled my hands away from me to
a part of him that was
hot and swollen,
his pumping blood beating a
tempo against my hands
like tiny drums.
I cried out when he pushed his fingers
into a private part of me
and cut me into
small pieces.
I closed my eyes and hid what was left
in a hollow place
deep inside me.
*
He moved my hands on
himself, breathing more quickly until
he made a small sound and
there was wetness on my
hands and arms
that felt like glue.
Don’t tell your mom
what you did, he said,
and left as quietly as he came.
*
He has invaded my room often
since that night,
but using that angry, hateful part of him
instead of fingers and
each time taking away
a small part of me.
*
Three years and
I have nothing left.
He has taken away
all of me
that was me.
I can give no more.
As he comes through my door,
eager,
bare and ready,
and climbs on my bed,
I reach beneath my pillow,
place the blade against his chest,
and watch as it disappears.
Hal C Clark – February 2011
Each year, thousands of children are sexually abused, usually by someone they know well. The children are scarred for the rest of their lives, although many eventually learn to cope with the pain. They don’t understand why these things happen to them, often believing it is their fault or that they deserve such treatment. We are all familiar with the stories of priests molesting young boys because these stories make the headlines. So many of the cases we never hear about, but the victims are still all around us. This is a cancer of our society and MUST be stopped.
I do not believe killing is the answer to anything, so it surprised me when the line “I reached beneath my pillow” came to me and I let the victim have the last word. It says something about the desperation, humiliation, degradation, and futility of the experience. I decided to let it stand. It is time to do something about this problem, and public awareness is the first step.
Please leave a comment and let me know how you feel.
They haunt me in my briefest sleep,
They’re never far away,
Their shattered bodies stay with me
In the night or light of day.
From somewhere came a storm of fire;
We fired back at the place.
Women’s screams and children’s cries,
Red-spattered on each face.
Mothers and their small children
Lay in gory refrains,
And nowhere can the guns be found
‘Mid twisted, torn remains.
Shards of a loving family,
A grimace shrouds each face,
Embrace in bloody agony, their
Bodies like antique lace.
How can these be my enemies?
No guns or arm held high,
There, children’s cherub faces
Without a will to die.
I’m in a constant battle,
And one I did not wage.
I’m here to do my duty,
Then turn another page.
No stranger, then, to murder,
But like a sin to me.
To take life from another,
Not what I want to be.
In this keen internal strife,
My mind cannot resolve.
The killer and compassion
In acute torment revolve.
And so, I can’t get past the pain,
The noise and solitude.
I see the masks of those I’ve slain,
Feel guilt I can’t elude.
They visit me in briefest sleep.
They do not go away.
Their anguished eyes stare back at me
Through each tormented day.
Hal C Clark – November 11, 2010
Veterans Day
This is a tribute to the men and women who endanger their lives to fight in our wars. Some are killed, some have physical injuries, while others have psychological injuries not easily seen or evaluated. Trauma to the mind is just as debilitating as a physical injury, and to those brave men and women who suffer this kind of injury, I dedicate this poem.
I am an ambassador from Nutopia
And proudly fly our pure white flag
My heart often yearns to go home again
So in dreams I visit and dwell without fear.
But there are no roads to take me there,
There are no armies, no treasures anyone would want.
And we all get along and let all have a life.
Defenders collect aggressors who threaten their essence.
Why do so many hold in their hearts
Hatred and avarice, intemperance, greed?
My thanks to John* for inviting me there
To a homeland sans strife bringing peace to my soul.
So I dream of that day, of that glorious day
When I can go home.
Hal C Clark – Sept, 2010
*John Lennon
I don’t know how many John Lennon fans are in this group, but one thing he was dedicated to was peace. Nutopia was a mythical land of his imagination, and it is a place I would like to visit, if not live. I can never understand why people must hate each other but I feel it must be based on greed, selfishness, or insecurity. I feel sorry for people who do not have the capacity to love unconditionally, as God loves us. He loves us no matter what we do. In that, we can be truly thankful.
So many gods, so many creeds
So many paths that wind and wind
While just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs
Coexist
We recently visited the temporary 9/11 Memorial in New York City and were haunted by what we saw there. Across the street they are building the permanent memorial and you can sometimes hear the sounds of construction.
A few minutes earlier we had been in the small church a block away from the World Trade Center buildings that had acted as the first trauma center, helping victims find medical help. It had been partly covered in debris from the collapse of the buildings, debris that took almost a year to completely clean up.
Here in the memorial are twisted beams and recovered shoes and combs and other personal items (including cell phones). In the basement is a bulletin board where the staff posts the comments of visitors from many lands who visit the memorial. Among the comments I found the above poem and copied it down. I don’t know who wrote it but it carries a brief but powerful message that resonated with me. It is a poem I wish I had written.
We will long remember the event, but unless we stand in that place and feel what the victims must have experienced, we have missed the most important part. We don’t have to hate each other. We will never all agree on anything, but we can agree to respect each other’s lives and grant each other the choices that God grants to all of us. Until that happens, we will continue to hurt and be hurt.
Today I planted both my feet
On Gettysburg’s broad, grassy hills
Where Mister Lincoln once had stood
To speak of deeds both brave and bold,
To honor men now buried there
Who fought for what men dare to seek:
The freedom and the liberty
To chose a way in which to live.
What thoughts were there in Lincoln’s mind
As he looked out upon that field
At circles of the myriad graves,
And knowing what his hand had caused?
But in his heart he knew ’twas true,
The value of our nation’s light:
Our constitution’s guarantee
Of rights for each and every man.
Is this the cause to make a man
Resort to killing other men?
Is there not any other way
To solve our petty differences?
The sadness in the spoils of war
Surely lived in Mister Lincoln’s heart
As he looked upon thousands of graves
Of men whose lives exist no more.
Hal C Clark
July, 2010
On July 1st and 2nd, we were in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania touring part of the battlefield and some of the museums connected with the battle. This was the anniversary date of the battle (July 1-3, 1863) and lots of people were about. I especially wanted to see the National Cemetery that President Lincoln dedicated on that November afternoon (November 19, 1863).
The markers were arranged in semicircles and as many were marked as they could identify, either by name or by the area they came from. It is a quiet place with lots of space and trees for shade. I sat there for a while, trying to imagine that day.
History records 51,000 casualties there in those three days: 8,000 killed on the battlefield, 6,000 more died soon after from their wounds, others taken prisoner, some unaccounted for.
Later I went to a house in town where President Lincoln spent the night and prepared the final draft of his address. The featured speaker was Edward Everett, a noted speaker of that time who spoke for about two hours. When he was finished, the President stepped up. He had been invited as an afterthought, to give a “few appropriate remarks.”
I have included a copy to the address in this post. As you may notice, President Lincoln had a very concise and complete way of speaking, saying more with these few words than Edward Everett had with all of his (By his own admission).
As always, I would appreciate your visit and your comments.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, , 186 .
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal”
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow, this ground– The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedica-ted to the great task remaining before us — that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln, Draft of the Gettysburg Address: Nicolay Copy. Transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Available at Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, D.C.: American Memory Project, [2000-02]),
She’s not very tall and
She’s probably nine,
She looks up at me
And I see the first sign
Of a smile on her face.
It starts as a grin,
Then it moves to her eyes,
As wrinkles form thin
Little lines in the corners
And across her small nose.
I wink and she laughs,
Thinks I’m strange I suppose.
She and her mommy
Go on down the aisle
And then round the corner,
So I shop for a while
Through the cereal boxes,
Then, from a yellow-box cave
I see two smiling eyes
And a small, timid wave.
Hal C. Clark
May, 2010
Being a retired elementary teacher, I enjoy the interaction with kids wherever I am, and this is often at the grocery store. I get different reactions to a smile or a funny face. Mom is usually comparing prices or engaged in other serious endeavors and the child is looking for any kind of distraction. This poem is a playful treatment of such an encounter.
We are on the road and have had a busy ten or so days – In Newport, PA for an autoharp gathering and workshop; in Gettysburg Pa for July first and second (the date of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg), and then to Washington DC for Independence Day. I have missed my writing time and blogging time and I apologize for the long time between posts. I will try to do better. I am currently working on two poems, one of them concerning Gettysburg and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which I also plan to post on this blog. As always, thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you will post a response.
Hal C Clark's Blog 