Antonia Clark

Women at Graves

If you want to learn

how to go on, study

women at graves,

the way they stand,

backs to the wind,

and how acceptance

settles like a fine mist

in their hair, a light hand

on their shoulders.

Their eyes hold what

the rest of us spend

our brief lives seeking:

an intimate knowledge

of earth and sky, why

they persist, together

yet apart, how a tilting

wing slices the air

at the precise point

of balance between them,

where the swallow goes,

what the crow knows.

The Departed

They gather to recite

our names, a tribe

of peaceful people

who make their home

along the riverbank,

subsisting on the promise

of fish, on the quiet

of late afternoons, when

long blue shadows move

across the endless grass.

They wait for us to tire

of our busyness, to grow

weary in our bones.

They're filled with longing

for us to give in, join them,

but patient as stones.

CP

Antonia Clark's poems have appeared in Anderbo, Apparatus, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Softblow, and other fine places. Her work won an Editor's Favorite Award at Camroc Press Review in 2012. She loves French picnics and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.