Human Life

By Tom Clark b. 1941 Tom Clark

Always behind my back I hear

The spastic clicking of jerked knees

And other automatic reactions

Tracking me through the years to where

Time’s winged chariot is double

Parked near the eternity frontier

And in such moments I want to participate

In human life less and less

But when I do the obligatory double take

And glance behind me into the dark green future

All I see stretching out are vast

Arizona republics of more

Tom Clark, “Human Life” from Light and Shade: New and Selected Poems.
Copyright � 2006 by Tom Clark. Used with the permission of Coffee House
Press, www.coffeehousepress.org.

Source: Sleepwalker�s Fate: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Biography

Tom Clark has combined the diverse roles of poet, biographer, novelist, dramatist, reviewer, and sportswriter during his writing career. In addition to dozens of books of poetry, a play, two novels, two story collections, and numerous biographies of literary figures, Clark's works include a book co-written with star baseball pitcher Mark Fidrych, poems about such sports legends as Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Bert Campaneris, . . .

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