Constance Clark - This Heat Sculpts a Spell

Allow the summer heat of Constance Clark’s “This Heat Sculpts a Spell” soak into you, as her poem unfolds its petals as an ode to connection. The heat is heavy in these lines, heavy enough to silence the world, but not the narrator’s yearning for companionship. “‘This Heat Sculpts a Spell’ [is part of] a set, each noticing how vividly summer heat and light intensifies all life and reminding us of the bigness of our universe. Each poem encompasses five days and thus divides the sekki into three five-day “kō,” Constance informed The Dewdrop.

This Heat Sculpts a Spell

a church bell hangs silent in east coast ether

soundless as gull bodies & wings parallel to sand & shore & waves
no matter how July powers up summer —–I am alone

a thousand tiger-orange cups trumpet
colibri drop down like emerald earrings —–I am audience

in earth’s estival palace

—–interlocking —–whorls of red hibiscus loosen as the sun soaks—
more wanting to the hummers in the ether

& to my naked eyes that pierce from behind —–I have been wanting

companionship —–aren’t these one & the same?
all the echo —–all the cups & ache of wing
I spread them & sleep —–conjure

a striped monarch larva lapping sap
from silkweed leaves

Constance Clark

Constance Clark is a poet and former educator based in central New Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dewdrop, Vita Poetica, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Hong Kong Review, and elsewhere. She spends much of her time walking and documenting the changing Northeast seasons, and is inspired by micro-dose epiphanies. Her work embodies this tender notice and a sense of grief for life’s impermanence. www.constanceclark.com