July 2017
C J Clark
cjclark144@att.net
For me, poetry is a form of story-telling. It’s an opportunity to illuminate ordinary moments, to peel away complex layers of common dramas, to flatter life’s imperfections. I am an artist, fiction author and hospice nurse living in the Texas Hill Country with my three comical dogs, who always manage to show me new ways to appreciate the natural world. 

EVELYN ROAD
 
 
Just past Creedmoor Texas
Someone carved a straight
Line long ago splitting
Prairie land into halves
And called it Evelyn Road
A shortcut across cool flat
Gray fields connecting
County roads to dead ends
Where goats crowd in pens
Beside trailer homes for shade
And ditches collect stray
Garbage, beer cans, plastic
Sacks, deflated and unfurled
Waving from tree branches
Like truce flags in the wind
Declaring that humans
Have won the right to trash
Evelyn Road, now marked
With potholes and cracks
And deep ruts on asphalt
Either side a bleak nothing
Except for a sudden burst
Of wildflowers, a tribute
No doubt to the memory
Of Evelyn.





RAINING PEARS
  
 
On Sunday
When they drove
Home from church
It was raining pears,
A deafening sound
Like a million tiny dancers’
Feet pounding the earth
Filling ditches with pairs
Of pears the size
Of heavy dewdrops
Too small to be stopped
By ordinary umbrellas
The neighbor’s dog happily
Catches them on his tongue
A delicacy in the dry
Hot Texas summer
And only a memory
By Monday morning.




OVERPOPULATION
 
 
This sky today
Is naked as the earth
Was before she was dressed
In roadways and buildings
And wrapped in ribbons
Of slick human racers
Then sliced into sections
By developers of land,
A malignancy so toxic
That air had to be sold
In bottles next to water
Distributed by churches
And consumed greedily by
The general overpopulation
Who long ago
Evicted God. 
© 2017 C J Clark
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