URBAN PASTORAL SCENE (mid-l940's)

By Tom Clark

In time we find three children, two charming girls,
one boy, enjoying picnic amid junk
strewn vacant lot in life's brief eclogue of
passage through ambient wild creation.
The kid in the middle's me, sucking on
some milk, while the two girls--script verso
identifies them as Jane and Suellen,
cherubic if imperfectly
recalled twin pigtailed-blond secret
sharers of archaic lunch time--munch huge
sandwiches that dwarf the tiny fists with
which they hungrily clutch them, much as life's clutched,
as though a whole world were there to be eaten.

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FORTIES SCENE

By Tom Clark

Here he's about seven: big serious forehead,
little fedora, little man, he holds,

or seems to drag, his baby brother, whose
eyes are closed. Bare winter trees project long

stark shadows. The days are short, light thin and
for those smiling family ghosts lined up in

invisible ranks behind the peony
bushes--this time of year no more than scrub

grey stubs of dumb roots hidden underground--
no providential dividend for brave

investment of years promised remains, save
this fading, hollow sound--life's dim echo?

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