By Clear and Clear: Riverside, Mid-Day by Patricia Clark

By Clear and Clear: Riverside, Mid-Day

Patricia Clark

The old self dying away, you can feel it, can hear

a skeletal crack, then snap, as a ridgeline

breaks all down the thorax, the bony carapace

splitting, a faint odor lifting off, burnt hair

and a wet sizzle, the new lying there almost fetid

with freshness, with its own moist softness—

fetal, or maybe just larval, tender, exposed.

On all sides water, this again, the spit of land

liminal, pelagic, far from dry, your very steps

leaving an imprint in grass. Tomorrow you could return,

matching your prints to the day before—this day—

a child's game. Is that where the fractures go?

Now you walk emancipated, on the loose—out of the house,

its stale air, parents gone at last—grown-up, free.

Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is the author of three books of poetry, most recently SHE WALKS INTO THE SEA. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, New England Review, Stand, and many other places. She teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Winter 2010 will find her on a sabbatical leave, travelling, writing, & working on a long poem.