For My Father
Marshall Wyman Clark
1923 – 2015


The man in the closed casket was my father,
Dead at the doorway of a much more ancient spectacle,
Drawing by his passing only the few who are left.
I’d fashion a sun for him that would never go out, 
But know how impossible that would be.  
And so I look out the window at the water and sky 
And see there in the deeper blue, the darker meaning?
And in the lighter, the scale of his passing, the depths
Of his travels into the long, into the endless now
Forever, where one day I’ll join him in a place
Where all the little wars we didn’t want to fight 
Are forgiven, are as if they’d never been, were only 
A few minor discords in the sovereign light of love.