Patricia Clark

Husband-Watching Height

“Legend says that long ago a woman whose husband had gone downriver to Ch’u used to climb to the height overlooking the Yangtze to watch for his return, until in time she turned to stone.”
[from Selected Poems of Su Tung-p’o, trans. Burton Watson)

That’s my fear, turning to stone.

When I say a sharp word to him,

that night my dreams fill with flies—

Thunderstorms, so I give the dog a pink

pill—yet, at the first sharp crack,

she vaults onto the bed, shivering.

One cloud white with an alabaster glow,

the next one dark as smoke.

I climb the nearest sycamore to see—

Is he treading the path toward home?

Something lies glittering, broken in shards.

That night my dreams fill with flies.

A soughing sigh—“always return to me,

darling,” caught up in wind. One cloud white,

alabaster glow, the next one smoky dark.

My fear familiar as the dog’s dreaming

when her paws quiver, she mouths

a trembling bark. Stay with what is known.

Though it frightens me, I nurse the fear,

familiar as my mother’s voice—

that’s where the sharp word turns mean.

That’s my fear, mean, turning to stone.

Author: Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Sunday Rising, The Canopy and most recently Self Portrait with a Million Dollars. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Plume, and Slate, among others. She received the 2018 Book of the Year Award from Poetry Society of Virginia for The Canopy. Her new book, her seventh, O Lucky Day is forthcoming in January 2025 from Madville Publishing.

 

Plume: Issue #31 January 2014