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1st day

Spring rain.
A tossed-out missive
blows. Who wrote it?
It starts to get dark.
Today also is over.
I go in.
Here’s the bathroom mirror.
Old owl!
Change your expression
in the spring rain
before it’s too late!

12th day

Spring wind
loosened her kimono
from her legs.
Nature no respecter of persons
in the spring wind,
has opened
her shop.
The spring wind
blows through the balustrade.

15th day

A sound from far away.
Days of mist and haze.
May well feel bored and listless.
Wouldn’t really know
a glowworm from a lantern
floating on top of a boat
through the dark spring haze.

19th day

Today also,
living in the haze —
a large house
under the redwoods,
a lost man
passing in the mists,
many cars
going by like boats.
Faces without names,
shrouded in a mist.

26th day

A long day.
My eyes are weary.
O, the days that are no more.
So glad they’re over.
The cat drifts in sleep
beneath the sound
of the spring wind
in the redwoods.
The raccoons rumble on the roof.

27th day

The morning expedition.
Baby sparrow
under the sink
leaks little chirps.
Mind in the way.
Mr. Worm is coming.

30th day

When I felt the spring rain
falling on my head
through the hole in the roof
I went out into the garden
knelt down
shed stupid tears
at the foot of the century tree
smelled things under the ground
turning to mulch
then went back inside
and listened to the distant sound
of ocean waves
pounding against the shore
in the spring rain.

These poems are from Cold Spring — A Diary by Tom Clark, 72 pages, perfect bound, USD $10.00, cover letterpressed by Roger Snell, author’s drawings and text offset by McNaughton Gunn Printers, available from Skanky Possum http://www.skankypossum.com, or through Small Press Distribution in the USA,
phone 1-800-869-7553.

Tom Clark was born (1941) and raised in Chicago and attended the universities of Michigan (B.A.) and Cambridge (M.A.). From England in the 1960s he edited a series of mimeograph magazines featuring a generation of younger poets who would also appear in The Paris Review during his ten-year tenure as poetry editor (1963-1973).

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