Constance Clark - Why I Stop & Stare

Poet Constance Clark treats readers to springtime interconnectedness and abundance with her masterful “Why I Stop & Stare”. From her forthcoming poetry collection, What the Moon Never Told Me: The Microseasons of the Northeast, “Why I Stop & Stare” presents a sekki (a Japanese 15-day solar unit), one of 24 throughout a calendar year. “‘Why I Stop & Stare’ is in three parts, each a snapshot of spring emergences and ephemeral abundance, divine in renewal, and thus divides the sekki into three five-day ‘kō’,” Constance told The Dewdrop.

Why I Stop & Stare

———-woodlands parade & our gardens—–fill—–bend & build
——————–flower—–home—–my home fills with memento mori

———-I walk here alone—–stop & breathe the punch of red peregrina
——————–& though I can only fathom it—–violet-throated hummingbirds

———-thrust tongues to lap its cloying nectar—–each body a spinning divinity
——————–the unreal world draws oddly near—

———-wherever I wake—–fresh dandelions butter the surface dirt
——————–& I am lured by this ankh—–moved by its representation—

———-brushstrokes fine as the trace of a painted turtle’s
——————–diagonal line

——————————across the malachite pond

——————–*

———-& earth gushes bouquet
——————–ephemeral wildflower scintillas beg more sunrays

———-dilate—–violets—–columbine—–trillium in petaled threes—
——————–other riches where the rains in shadowy ivy seep

———-down to the metallic-brown stream
——————–weed flowers—–dandelions & chickweed

———-purple deadnettle patches—–clover
——————–the lemony simmer of lesser celandine

———-& on emerald viburnum bushes
——————–emerald as green as gold

——————————as my envy

——————–*

———-I stop where the saucer magnolia petals drop & clutter
——————–rain lacquers their brushed silk cups

———-& each drop becomes a tiny pulse hologram of itself
——————–recursive from below the teardrop & from its mother tree

———-above—–isn’t that the abstraction of survival?—–or is that
——————–solicitation of faith?—–& if not for its sake—–why would I

———-stop & stare into the morning end—–alone & on my knees
——————–face to face with fragrance & pink & cream flowers?

———-I have seen the trees sprout first leaves & say their names
——————–in oval & star—–isn’t this also the awakening of our navels?

——————————or is that the tug of a sugar moon?

Constance Clark

Constance Clark has published poems online most recently in Jerry Jazz Musician and Right Hand Pointing, and in Vita Poetica, Kosmos, Litbreak and elsewhere. Other poems have appeared in print anthologies. From her current manuscript, What the Moon Never Told Me: The Microseasons of the Northeast, several poems are forthcoming. Her work embodies the essence, grief and the sacred of impermanence, and invites witness to fleeting beauty and the fragile yet unforgiving forces that sustain us. Clark, a nature enthusiast inspired by micro-dose epiphanies, lives and writes in central New Jersey.