Given snow
that doesn’t flinch
to throw its pounds
through heaven inch
by inch, that sows
a billion motes
of chill into
this ground no man
defends; and given
wind that won’t
begin to tell
us how it’s driven,
where it fell
from, what it’s meant
to blow and which
proud limbs the clouds
want riven—no,
not even why
its howling whims
have pardoned us
this far—friend, given
such, it’s hard
to watch the black-eyed
scarecrow miming
care above
our blighted garden:
tonight he seems
intent to wrack
the soil and climb
the air, to die,
to crash his flimsy
cross against
this great grim passion
in the sky.
George David Clark
George David Clark is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College. His Reveille (Arkansas, 2015) won the Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Image, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he lives in Washington, Pennsylvania.
Also by George David Clark (see all)
- Song of the Genie - October 24, 2020
- The Latch - October 24, 2020
- Northern Lake - October 24, 2020
