Sailor

Never to be erased, now, how a word 
comes back when I see a riffle on the face 
of the river, fetch. 

Never the imperative said to a dog, 
we never had a dog together, never the kids  
who waited in shadow.

And I suppose never a proper goodbye. 
When was it I googled his name? There 
it was, an obituary, end. 

Sailboat, and his dream, never to come: 
a catamaran, a voyage to New Zealand. 
The vocabulary of boats—

I thank him now for that, a fetch 
may indicate weather, or maybe a shoal 
to steer away from. 

Mainsail and jib, rudder, lines, and keel. 
Coming about, the danger of the boom. 
And the tell-tale, high 

on the mast. What we tried, five years, 
was not to be. Never a regret, but words stay. 
Boat without a name. Fetch.

Where It Hurts

Hip in the night, left hip. 
Sleep on that side until the mind wakes,

says, “Turn over.”

Then back into the dream of our blue Honda 
up in the air, vehicle for intercontinental 
travel—and he’s at the wheel, asleep, 

with me in the back. At dawn’s light 
I see other vehicles—a 747 floats below, domed 
profile, red and blue tail, to our right, 

another car, down further, a station wagon, filled. 
Meantime I have a cheesecake 

to make—how will I bake it? 
I keep going over how much sugar to add 
to the filling—something like a cup. 

Down below, a thrashing sea, people 
trying to swim, a boat being 
swamped, spilling out people. 

An ant crawls my knee. 

“India,” someone says. 

“Bursitis,” the doctor told me.
“Get a new mattress.” 

She told me as you get older, you might need 
more of a cushion, a soft 

surface to sink into.

PATRICIA CLARK

Patricia Clark is the author of Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars, her sixth book of poems, and three chapbooks, including Deadlifts. She has new work in Plume, Blackbird, and Barrow Street plus two anthologies: Show Us Your Papers and Rewilding: Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2020).