| Three Poems by Patricia Clark | ||
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The Same Trees The turf still shows the cut of the gravedigger's spade, and a few brown crumbs of dirt sprinkle the blades of grass. A wreath, a spray of blooms still lie where we stood, heads down, three days ago, under trees we knew as children, the same trees. We have hauled ourselves out of the car, its exhaust puffing, to stand in the drizzling rain and then to kneel. Mother says, "He's really here after all. It's not a dream." We say one prayer together, the worn familiar words, bent on the wet sod. And I notice how we each touch the ground, that turf starting to root, before leaving, as one pats a wailing child—hand of comfort, of warmth. Scotchbroom Remember how golden they blazed, growing wildly on the hill near our house, the hill between our house and the freeway. We pulled out handfuls and carried them home until Mother sneezed and said to stop. We'd climb up to the swamp after a long week under the eyes of the nuns, learning the penmanship and deportment of school, of life, as the church bells tolled through our childhood. Frogs' eggs floated in a mass, like periods and commas in the muddy pages of water. Carried home in a jar, they never hatched out. Three years ago I drove back to the spot where we picked blackberries, where our dog was struck by a car one year, but not killed, where we passed going home, carrying a chalice of flowers or eggs, asking myself how we all grew out of this. And there were still golden petals above a dusty green, bent as they always were, from wind and from rain. La Chanson Du Rossignol (after the painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau) At first glance, a standard scene— a girl sitting on a stone block near the woods while a nightingale sings. But there's something heartbreaking caught in her face, something that speaks of the tragedies of class, of chores repeated until the body becomes as worn and beaten up as a shoe. Her face, transfixed, shines with a solemn attention that's also weary. What do the bird's sweet notes have to do with her? Yes, she'll link arms with her love at dusk and stroll here listening to the trilling bird, but there's no denying economics. Her interlaced hands are red from work and her feet, though neatly crossed, are bare, calloused on the soles, no doubt, and cracked. The whiteness of her arms, the intelligent, thoughtful face will have to be sacrificed. Before long, she'll be pregnant, and then again. Isn't that part of the thought in the face, the dark knowledge of what lies ahead? She would seize a chance if one were offered, and she'd make as much of it as possible—so say the brown eyes, the spot of red above one cheek. In reality, though, the painter's named and she's not. Finding her grave— for she's long since dead—would be impossible. Her sole moment of fame remains this pose, the brushstrokes by his hand in somber hues. ___________________________________________________________________________ "La Chanson Du Rossignol" appeared locally in an alternative newspaper/magazine called Freeman. Order NORTH OF WONDERING
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