Gary Lark

Snake River Gorge
 
Tough bright lupine
dot the gorge,
sunning balsamroot
along my trail to the edge.
I’ve brought my mother
to visit an Idaho cousin
a week after my father’s death.
 
A great spill red rock
paints a thousand feet
across the river.
I can feel my father
in the muscles of my walking,
in the organs and wonder
of my being.
 
Tonight, up Pine Creek,
a couple trout for dinner,
a thunder storm,
alone among the trees
waving in the wind,
everything is so full
of emptiness.



Fundamentally
 
Quarks are hardly there
and gluons have no mass at all.
We call them particles
but they could be spots,
or dibbles, or woogles of energy
dancing with one another.
The elementary us is sparking
and playing hide and seek.
I watch the neighbor’s two little dogs
chase and play for hours.
It is good to remember who we are.   

Gary Lark’s most recent collection is Daybreak on the Water (Flowstone Press, 2020). Other work includes, Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press, 2019), River of Solace (Flowstone Press, 2016), In the House of Memory (BatCat Press, 2016), Without a Map (Wellstone Press, 2013), Getting By (Logan House Press, 2009). Easter Creek is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Poet Lore, The Sun, ZYZZYVA. https://garylark.work/