As if what’s said here is not my heart’s wreck.
As if turbulence did not author the need.
As if this scribbling were not last council.
As if this sheet would be found in the breach.
As if you, son, were reading this fifty years from now.
As if you held it in your hands like a violin.
As if you would listen for the secrets.
As if the music of the blue altitude signified.
As if you, daughter, bequeathed this poem to your daughter.
As if on her first day of adulthood she read and knew.
As if from this vantage I held love for her.
As if my love were actual atoms.
As if this letter did not enter the crematorium of the attic.
As if it did.
Kevin Clark’s first full-length collection of poetry, In the Evening of No Warning (New Issues Press, 2002) was selected by the Academy of American Poets for a grant from the Greenwall Fund. Clark's poems have appeared inThe Antioch Review, The Georgia Review, College English, and The Black Warrior Review. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in The Iowa Review, Papers on Language and Literature, The Southern Review, Contemporary Literary Criticism, The Georgia Review, and Poetry International.
