By George David Clark
Henry Thomas Clark, 10/7/14
I. Your Picture
We’ve framed an ultrasound
of you and Peter
holding hands
(or almost) in the womb,
your moon-bright arms
crossed in a black balloon
with week, and weights,
and heights in millimeters
penciled on the side.
We say it’s good
that he, at least, was with you
when you died,
that unlike us
you’ll never know the why
of being lonely
or what naked falsehood
feels like in one’s mind.
You see, it’s false
to say your death
was somehow grace. It’s grace
that spared Cain’s life
and later gave Eve other
sons, despite creation’s
wastes and faults.
I wish you could have known
love’s aftertastes.
I wish you’d had a chance
to hate your brother.
II. Your Mirror
I wish you’d had a chance
to hate your brother’s
charming smile,
how it would softly chafe
your teeth; his eyes,
the way they’d misbehave
above your cheeks; his tongue
might bait your stutter.
Nights, in the mirror
you’d have seen your lovers
kiss his lips, and mornings
as you’d shave
you’d nick yourself
and wonder who forgave
you when the face you shared
caused him to suffer.
No. No childhood scars
will make it clearer
which you are.
We’ll have a future tense
for Peter, while you’re left
at one night less
than one night old,
my son without a likeness,
whom I can’t hold
or half-behold, condensed
to shadows in the nursery’s
lightless mirror.
III. Your Shadows
The shadows in the nursery’s
lifeless mirror
owe their nights to no one;
you were gone
before the lights
could pin those umbras on.
If now they gather here
in tangles sheerer
than a nest of nylon
hose, yet nearer
flesh than atmosphere,
they must be drawn
as I am by the dimmed
lamp’s denouement—
this stupid wish your guise
might still cohere or
that some phantom wisp
could throw its shade
and let the smallest
sliver of you loom
against the wall. Instead,
daybreak exhumes
this catch of shadows
till they’ve all been weighed
and matched to furniture.
My shape has stayed
to cast your name
into the empty room.
IV: Your Room
I cast your name
into the empty room
and make the place more
empty still: the chair’s
clean seat adopts
a misanthropic air
that mocks the bureau’s
sympathetic bloom.
I watch the wooden crib
as it’s consumed
by morning, bar by bar,
till crying downstairs
lets me know
how far this solitary
staring has erased
me in the gloom.
Your healthy twin
is hungry, tired, parched,
and wet, or simply
needing to be held,
and yet I still don’t move.
I feel compelled
to tell the room
it’s missing you, to mark
the vacuum with a few
more decibels
of Henry, Henry,
Henry Thomas Clark.
V: Your Names
My Henry, Henry, Henry
Thomas Clark:
your name’s an ingot—
if I even think it
after midnight
in the bedroom’s dark
the kiln my mind is
fires to sing it
out of shape, to turn
its sounds to trinkets
or just melt it down
to question marks
so I can ladle up
that pink and drink it
till my ears drown
and the dreaming starts.
Your sister’s “Gemma-
Lemon” in her fruit
pajamas, Georgie-Boy’s
my little buddy,
and Pete these days
is simply “the recruit.”
Beneath my desk
you’d be “my understudy,”
“Huffy Hank” in tears,
or “Huckleputty”
sweetly teething
on your mom’s Bluetooth.
VI: Your Urn
Tonight Pete’s teething
on your mom’s Bluetooth.
He found the scissors
to derange his hair.
We’ve left the gate
down and he’s on the stairs,
or else he’s scrambled
up the dollhouse roof.
The crumpled books
and cracker crumbs are proof
he’s loose . . . disordered
blocks, a toppled chair. . . .
Some days he’s absolutely
everywhere
until I wish him gone,
to tell the truth.
Not you. You stay
exactly as you’re left:
the tame and quiet twin,
the easy one,
the boy who never
makes a mess, the son
whose very name’s
our shibboleth
for innocence, whose
only fault is done—
who never cries, or fights,
or takes a breath.
VII: Your Image
You never cry, or fight,
or take a breath,
but you wreck pictures
just like any child.
These days our crowded
foregrounds show the cleft
and no amount
of staging reconciles
the family’s best
lopsided photo ops.
Your mom, positioning
one shot remarks,
Just think how this would look
with Henry propped
in Daddy’s lap—
this picture needs six Clarks.
Of course, we have
the images we took
in the recovery room
when nurses brought
your body in your blanket,
but I won’t look
at those. You’re in these others,
though you’re not:
our half-filled stroller
is a double-seater.
We’ve framed the ultrasound
of you and Peter.