Legal Studies ForumEDITOR

James R. ElkinsProfessor of Law

West Virginia University

The Legal Studies Forum was established by the American LegalStudies Association to promote humanistic, critical, trans-disciplinaryapproaches to legal studies. All manuscript correspondence should beaddressed to: Professor James R. Elkins, College of Law, West VirginiaUniversity, PO Box 6130, Morgantown, WV, 26506. The editor can bereached by email: jelkins@labs.net

The Legal Studies Forum (ISSN: 0894-5993) publishes two issues a yearand occasional supplemental issues. Editorial and Business Offices:College of Law, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506-6130.

The Legal Studies Forum is printed by Western Newspaper PublishingCo., Inc., 537 East Ohio St., Indianapolis, IN 46204-2173.

LEGAL STUDIES FORUM

Volume 38 2014 No. 1

CONTENTS

P DESIGNATED DREAMER P

James Clarke

Storm Front

5 Sisyphus’s Stone

6 Hasty Note from a Dizzy Planet

7 Empty Desert

8 Country Still Life

9 Fired

10 Commemoration

11 Night Moth

12 At the Funeral Home

13 Unread Memoir

14 Memorial

15 Hermes

16 Storm Front

17 A Glassy Stillness

19 Waiting in Silence

Shadowland of the Law

21 Fugitive Light

22 Brief Epiphany

23 Shadowland of the Law

24 The Craftsman

25 Musings

26 My One Allotted Question

27 Courthouse Still Life

28 Jurors

29 Law

30 Judicial Troika

32 Undertow

33 Dress Rehearsal

34 Flawed Master

35 Dust of Indifference

36 Unexpected Blessing

37 Curious Compassion

38 Panic in the Dead of Night

39 Interment Camp

40 Primeval Mind

41 A Judge Makes Peace with His Mistakes

42 Portrait of a Judge

43 How to Paint a Timorous Judge

44 Lull of Night

45 A Judge’s Prayer

Architecture of Grief

49 Gutted Dreams

50 Baffling News

51 Long Voyage

52 The Architecture of Grief

53 Black Cloud

54 Autumn Blues

55 Boulder Dam

56 Winter Greening

57 Listen, Friend

58 Obsession

59 Stars

Designated Dreamer

63 The Past Still Lives

64 Apollo’s Dream

65 Second Thoughts

66 Designated Dreamer

67 The Long Night

68 A Way Through

69 Morning Surprise

70 Awakening

The Road Home

73 New Spring

74 The Road to Pleasure Bay

75 Spring Reverie

76 Ephemera

77 Early Morning at the Lake

78 Limerick Lake Blues

79 Desertion

80 To Carry Death

81 Dark Wood

82 A Matter of Age

83 Elegy for a Dead Poet

84 Turning 80

P About the Author

85 James Clarke

P DESIGNATED DREAMER P

James Clarke

LSF | 1

STORM FRONT

LSF | 3

Sisyphus’s Stone

Day after day,between morning’s spilt coffee & evening’s ragged return

we gather in the vestibuleof the heartfor another lessonin the hard art of loving,

which no one fully masters, but keeps trying, hopingto be someday what we aspireto be next,

tomorrow after tomorrow.

LSF | 5

Hasty Note from a Dizzy Planet

Internet, Facebook, iPad, texting, smartphone, every-one’s nerves raked by a tsunami of words, silenced bythe blare of what is not being said. Let those who havefaith in how we live step forward.

I, for one, have begun to unravel, don’t know how muchmore of this I can take. Sometimes I think of digging ahole and climbing in. Recently I told my wife, who haswitnessed all my aberrant, dramatic eruptions, that ifthe pain becomes unbearable I might throw myself intoa lake of molten lead.

“You know, don’t you, what this means,” she said,“you’re getting old.”

6 | Clarke

Empty Desert

I carry my mother’s blood, my father’s blood, yet night erases my

name; I walk a cindery path offailure & loss, my small body

coiled in darkness; my fate seems accidental; scholars & timepieces

cannot track me, I leave no finger-prints. Sometimes I feel like a dead

crow in starless night lying in its blood red plumage. From the thick

grass, a thousand blank faces stare at me. Only my absence

looks back.

—after Bonné de Blas

LSF | 7

Country Still Life

As flames consumed the tumbledown farmhouse,its dry timbers popping like muffled drums, the farmer’s old sheep dog sat by the road waiting, fire reflected in its rainwater eyes.

8 | Clarke

Fired

The word broke like splintering ice.Christmas 1945—it was his first job since returning from the war.

That was the winter we ran out of coal, icicleshung like daggers from the eaves, taps stopped running when everything froze & chronic angers settled in upon us,

our first inkling that the war we thought had endedwas only beginning.

LSF | 9

Commemoration

I spin memoriesout of thinnest air,nail them to the walls of my housewith the invisible hammer of love,listen to the musicof times lostas they fade & leak away,

knowing how everythingis mediated & contingent,the hammer lives only in me &one day, alas, house, hammer & I will part company, no longer be there.The day the music dies.

10 | Clarke

Night Moth

awake like me almost invisible in the dark,fluttering againsta single bedroom light,fragility our common plight, a flick of the wrist

we both disappear.

LSF | 11

At the Funeral Home

I arrive early, wait in the vestibule.“Funerals let us say goodbye” readsthe message in the pale-gold frame above the reception desk. The Director ushers me into a room with washed-out light, the smell of furniture polish.

I find you laid out on a gurney in your good blue pin-striped suit, your mouth clamped shut, all your well-mapped lines of living expunged from brow &cheeks. I listen for the rise & fall of a single breath. What I hear is stillness & silence in this dark parlor stuffed with loss. “Forgive me brother,” I whisper as I rise to leave. “I’m not yet ready today to say goodbye.”

12 | Clarke

Unread Memoir

The morning of the operation I told my sisterin the hospital that I’d just finished a memoir of our chaotic childhood. I didn’t want her tobe alarmed when she read it & found that my memory of what happened differed from hers.“There’s no single version of a shared past,” I told her. “You know, Dad’s a ghost to me now”she said. “Maybe your account of our child-hood will bring back some of the good things I’ve forgotten.”

For a long moment we held hands in silence.When the orderlies finally came and wheeled her down the empty corridor she raised her hand to her lips, smiled & blew me a kiss. “I love you, too,” I whispered in her direction. Then the stainless steel doors swung open & she disappeared from view, slipping quietly into the timeless Now where none of our memoirs are unread, nothing’s forgotten or unsaid.

LSF | 13

Memorial

At the end of the service,her brief life rendered to ashes,

portioned out to mournersin containers of celadon,

a memento, they are told,something tangible,

as if grief could be held at

bay, death disarmed bya gift of ashes.

14 | Clarke

Hermes

Who is this arrogant stone deitywith the long beard, surrounded by bronze lamps,who demands we cometo his altar at eveningfill his lamps with oil,burn incense,pay tribute in coin beforewe are allowed to whisperour questions in his ear,with no guarantee of answersunless we catch by chancesome vagrant rumor or voicefloating in air?

LSF | 15

Storm Front

A large pasture slashedwith goldenrod, a shaded maple tree, sheep grazingbeside a silvery creek in the sun.

In the distant darkening skya soundless storm edges closer.

16 | Clarke

A Glassy Stillness

Even memory is undersentence of death.

—Czesław Miłosz

Sky darkens imperceptibly,rain stipples the flat surfaceof the pond,drops falling one by one making tiny ripples,each a memory circling & wideningwater into waterleaving only a glassy stillness.

LSF | 17

Waiting in Silence

Thwarted & unhappy,my hungry prayerscrumble like biscuits.

How I covet the holyconcentration of cows,chomping in silence,sturdy as ships.

The task of the day—simple & profound,learn how to pray.

18 | Clarke

SHADOWLAND OF THE LAW

LSF | 19

Fugitive Light

Every day in court I hunch over my bench booklistening to the sputterings of lawyers & witnesses,

hastily scribbling down notes trying to keep up with the torrent of ploys & obfuscations, hoping to discover the hidden lode of verity beneathfalsehoods & rehearsed stories, find a clear passage

through the cloudy words & bleak days, like the frantic sparrow this morning who strayed into

the courtroom from an half-open window, circled the room looking, like me, for an exit,

a glimmer of light on the wing.

LSF | 21

Brief Epiphany

Driving to court along the Hanlon Expresswaythis spring morning, the sun peeks through the skeletal woods, skims the top of an em-bankment, winks off the cars speeding past,

tinges the smoke from Sleeman’s Brewery a pale orange. A few shards of dirty white snow still blur the edges of fields along the 401, a Marsh Hawk on a fence, poised & imperious, sounds

off in the colorless air. By the time I reach the Milton ramp & glimpse the courthouse in the distance my spirits rise with the sun, now a radiant white coin, but I cannot alter or

disguise the reality that I must enter the stormy badlands of the law where hair-trigger lawyers know how to put the lie to every false dream.

22 | Clarke

Shadowland of the Law

I enter the cold gray Siberia of thecourthouse, take my seat behind

the bench, the peculiar smell of anold building thick with the debris

of imperfect laws, the detritus of failed dreams, my old eyes dimmed

by bad lighting. Justice delayed, justice denied, the lawyers contend.

Under no illusions, I know I cannotmend the system; we are all prisoners

in the shadowland of the law.

LSF | 23

The Craftsman

On this blustery January morning thejudge, longed to escape the courthouse,

enticed by the blizzard of white outsidehis window & the inviting thought of taking

his children skiing, but he couldn’t leave,duty bound as he was cobbling together

awkward legal boxes for people’s miseries,the warped & knotty wood yielding only

grudgingly to the blunt tool of reason, his distracted mind adrift in pure snow.

24 | Clarke

Musings

After another case in court—a brutal father, frustratedby his daughter’s inability to domath, punished her witha lit cigarette—I go home witha sense of defeat.

At times like this I turn towishful thinking on the chanceit’ll help me survive the miserythat encircles me.

I tell myself that being witnessto a flawed humanity I cannotescape is not cause for despair.No one appointed me the oracleof Delphi.

LSF | 25

My One Allotted Question

Lord,by what whimsy of divine justicedid you allow a man disposed to evasionwho sees butdimly through the shadowsto sit on a glass throne judging others?

26 | Clarke

Courthouse Still Life

A lawyer lingers at the water fountainreading a legal document;

a couple opposite each other in the corridorexchange icy stares;

the courtroom constable stretches the fulllength of her boredom & yawns;

a woman outside Family Court daubs anembroidered handkerchief across a boy’s tear-stained eyes;

the judge pauses at his chamber door, glancesat his watch, draws a last deep breath;

everyone awaiting the Angel of Mercy toswing open the courtroom doors to the

healing waters of the pool of Justice.

LSF | 27

Jurors slouch in the jurybox, stolid as rocks

under the boredgaze of the judge,

rhetoric of counselbreaking over them

in hissing waves, the law drilling on

their nerves; confused &disoriented, they spin

in whirlpools ofindecision, praying

with the judge for aquick verdict to

end the torture.

28 | Clarke

Law

With its long-jawed vocabularies, archaic rituals & sharp knives,

with its high-minded intentions & squabbling lawyers,interminable delays & baffling gaps,

with rules that bend with the money, judgmentstainted with the sly odor of vengeance,

with the newly convicted begging for mercy &wrongly convicted crying of innocence,

with insomniac nights & wrenching decisions,

with a divided heart of rank misgivings, I bequeathyou this Blindfold of Justice.

LSF | 29

Judicial Troika

In the big city law office where he worked, hekept meticulous track of his client’s billable hours —every week, day, minute duly accounted for &entered in his daybook—a habit that endearedhim to the firm.

After his appointment to the bench his habitfound a more creative outlet: diligently tallyingoffenders’ debts to society on sentencing—allthe forfeited years, months, days—“wages oflost time” he dubbed them.

*

With years on the bench, the oldjudge, a want-to-be believer inJustice, grudgingly lived with thequibbles, subterfuges & evasionsthat lawyers pushed in his direction.

One spring morning a lawyer engaged in shifty, dubious reasoning pushed the judge an inch too far. Having been blinded so many times before by the smokeof law, he abruptly rose from the bench, stalked out his courtroom door.

*

During the sentencing of a kennel operatorfound guilty of cruelty to dogs—many skinny& malnourished, ribs showing, covered in sores & bites—the judge got distracted by a house fly buzzing around his ears. He tried to rid himself of his tormentor & after several near misses, he finally swatted the fly. As it lay on his bench—a greenish, metallic blob—stunned & squirming, he began to

30 | Clarke

pluck off its antennae, wings & legs, only to glance up at the last moment, bits of the fly stuck to his fingers, to catch the plea of defense counsel: “Your honor, we ask the court to have mercy on the defendant.”

LSF | 31

Undertow

After his appointment to the bench, the judge wanted to thinkhis carefully constructed decisions would make the legal worlda more human enterprise. But as the years slipped and sloshedalong disappointment began to set in. The tide of evil-doingcontinued to wash ashore and the law made scant headwayagainst the dark forces of decline and disintegration. Every dayhe saw vengeful litigants, their barbed hearts intact, trying touse the courts as a cudgel against their adversaries. Reasonablecompromises he’d glued together to defuse family feuds oftencame unstuck. Everything he touched appeared provisional andexpedient. On low days, he felt as if all his words were writtenin invisible ink.

One day leaving the courthouse he had a chilling thought: thefuture awaits us all like a dark sun.

32 | Clarke

Dress Rehearsal

Before leaving for court in the morning theold judge was in the habit of scattering

handfuls of sun flower seed and corn kernels like small mercies around the gnarled crab-

apple tree in his yard, watching squirrels forage in the grass for anything to slake

their unappeasable hunger, amazed at theiraerial artistry, free-falling & leaping

through trees, arcing from thin branch to thin branch indifferent to the earth’s gravity &

their bodily ballast, chasing each other & skirmishing like fierce warriors and sworn

enemies—a foreshadowing of the comic mad-ness that awaited him each day in the

circus tent of law.

LSF | 33

Flawed Master

Keeper of the holy order of things;master of jurisprudence;explainer of the changing rules that keep ussafe & fit for human habitation savethe ones that never change & confound us most,

rules that tell us what to live for.

34 | Clarke

Dust of Indifference

Just as first snowflakes spiral to their quiet death, unnoticed,

you fail to observe until too latethe tiny particles, finer than flour,

more toxic than asbestos, sifting down through the querulous air

the long afternoons of courtroomtedium, coating bench, bar, tables

chairs, dockets, water jugs, laptops,pens, with a thick layer of dust,

blinding the eyes of Justice with a gray indifference.

LSF | 35

Unexpected Blessing

It takes more than a few years to learn to navigate the twists andcurves of the law; the road is never safe or straight.

Be forearmed. Surprises await: the balled fist,the clenched jaw,the fiery eyes,the oblique projection of blame and

then, where you least expect, springs of pure grace that douse the flames of a judge’s singed nerves.

36 | Clarke

Curious Compassion

One evening in bed the judge observeda tiny, red ant wayfaring across the sheets.His first impulse was to swiftly end its ramble. But something came over him. Rather than spoiling the red ant’s happiness—and his own—he switched off the light and let the red ant stumble on in the dark.

Next morning getting ready for another punishing day in criminal court with a throng of hapless offenders, the judge rememberinghis nocturnal encounter with the red ant, reminded himself there was no room for his curious compassion within the stern protocolsof the law.

LSF | 37

Panic in the Dead of Night

A small, frail woman appeared in the judge’s dream, shook hertight fist at him, complained vehemently that he was treatingher unfairly. Her tirade finished, the judge found himselfrattled, noxious fumes rising in his throat, unable to concentrateon his rulings. Feeling the wrath of the woman’s unappeasable anger, he calleda recess, retreated to his chambers, and took a dosage of theanti-dream pills prescribed for agitated judges. When the pillsbegan to take effect, he regained his bearings, returned to thecourtroom, and resumed proceedings.

38 | Clarke

Interment Camp

No one knew for certain why or when the camp came intoexistence. No barrier or razor wire enclosed its perimeter. Norhad anyone ever laid eyes on the Commandant as the renegadeColonel was called. All his orders were posted under his signa-ture at the Control Center while everyone slept. And no onedared dream of escape; there was nowhere to go.

Many years earlier the inmates had lost track of time, stoppedthinking about the future. Grumbling and questioning seededdiscontent, were officially discouraged. Trying to figure thingsout only made everyone more miserable. The wisest tactic,they’d concluded, was to keep themselves amused and diverted:shopping, all-night poker, round-the-clock bingo, sports, TV,movies.

With the exception of a few dissenters—mostly poets andmystics kept under close surveillance—everyone had resignedthemselves to the numbing routine of camp life, content tosurvive day to day and if lucky, be rewarded with a good mealand a night’s sleep. As the years slipped by the apathy of theinmates became second nature; they regarded their death-in-lifeexistence as “normal.” Some even grew fond of their guards.

Then when the Commandant finally announced the date ithardly came as a shock. A few blinked or shrugged, but mostwent doggedly about their daily affairs like any other ordinaryday. When the day arrived all of them filed meekly to the openpit, looking incredibly resigned. No one, the guards noted, hadany last words.

LSF | 39

Primeval Mind

The old judge in sentencing hard-core criminals had grown into the practice of not looking them in the face. He realized he was in the grip of a ancienttaboo: never look evil directly in the eye.

What the old judge was slow to realizeis that he had his own cache of moltendarkness. Sometimes looking in the mirror he’d glimpse a broken face he had trouble recognizing as his own.

40 | Clarke

A Judge Makes Peace with His Mistakes

In the thicket of the law I sometimes hear a caustic critic,pointing out my mistakes. At first I tried to ignore this aggrava-tion. But like a shadow his voice tracked me everywhere,indifferent to my stern stares. It was almost as though he wasa long-lost twin who’d been waiting for me since our first stepstogether.

Nowadays, when I mount my Olympian seat in the courtroommy critic tags along, observes in a friendly fashion that no oneshould take themselves so seriously, that long before the rou-lette wheel of the law ceases to spin, all my mistakes will beburied in the bin of oblivion.

LSF | 41

Portrait of a Judge

Observe the stiff angle of the head,aloof eyes leaking righteousness,clenched jaws that trap the words hecannot or will not speak.

Look closer & youcan see the furrowed brow,the hesitant, vacillating lips,the riven face of Justice.

42 | Clarke

How to Paint a Timorous Judge

Pose him behind a desk heaped with massive tomes. Garb himin gray, the official color of law. Catch the spirit of his vacilla-ting voice as he pleads with litigants to settle. As his struggle todecide “yes” or “no” was well known, try to capture his ambiva-lence by accenting the panic in his small, irresolute eyes whenfinally cornered to make a decision. With a last touch highlightthe sheen on his brow and the wavering look on his face. Hisportrait, now ready for hanging, requires no identifi-cation. Thenameplate can simply say: THE JUDGE.

LSF | 43

Lull of Night

After another day of discord riddledwith treacherous language, the old

judge, sheet lightning flashing outside his window, listens through the night

to rain rattling against glass, ponders the abstract follies of the law & its chronic

inability to chart the ways of the humanheart, tries for brief moments to hold

onto a stone of stillness that would keep him anchored before a new day arrives &

he lumbers back through the portals of the courthouse carrying another heavy

sack of broken promises.

44 | Clarke

A Judge’s Prayer

Too long I’ve been a bedfellow with trouble,immersed in the crabbed world of law, cast down most days by the greed & guile of the human tribe, often losing my bearings, bruised & bitter, a desperate prayeron my lips.

LSF | 45

ARCHITECTURE OF GRIEF

LSF | 47

Gutted Dreams

A few months after his wife’s suicide, the judge accepted a guilty plea to arson from a man who’d torched the home he and his wife had built. The previous evening she’d told him the marriage was over, packed her suitcases & left with their two small children.

That evening in the silence of his own wounded life, the judge studied the police photos of the caved roof, the charred walls, the scorched field stone fireplace, the litter of treasured keepsakes reduced to ashes, wondering how anyof us survive the bonfires of this cruel world.

LSF | 49

Baffling News

One noon as earth tipped toward spring, you quietlydeparted on a journey into the darkness. You left no clue, no explanation to appease the baffled mind, taking with you all the answers to the compulsory questions:when? how? why?

When the bad news came that you’d flung wide the doorto oblivion, I faced a dark sea of dread, floundered at night through endless dreams, watching as I drownedunder waves of imagined guilt.

A guilt that refuses to go away.

50 | Clarke

Long Voyage

Today we sitin the sunroomwhisper small inconsequential things.

We barely touchacross the deep voidof silence.

Now dark seepsinside the trees behind the park,we watch the sky break

into crimson fires.I close my eyes, seeus together in that time

we once enteredthat now abandons us,a world that would not let us stay.

LSF | 51

The Architecture of Grief

Smaller and smaller archways leading into a dark celestial dome, the sucking sound of light

disappearing into a million black holes

52 | Clarke

Black Cloud

The black cloud that hidthe face of the mountainis drifting away;if only seeing you againcould be that simple.

LSF | 53

Autumn Blues

The wind that blows is all anybody knows.

—Thoreau

Certain names cut deep:

Teetaw with chalk white skin begging us to be with her at the end, help her concentrate on dying;

my friend Morley, an oracle of fair weather all his life, cursing the storms that darkenedhis path;

and brilliant and kind Emma, a teacher and friend who dropped the word “better” from her lexicon of hope, severed the knot that bound her to her pain.

Letter by letter the wind gouges their memory across my heart.

54 | Clarke

Boulder Dam

Until old friends showed him the photo they’d taken of them standing on the dam, his arm around her waist, Lake Mead a shining blue mirror in the distance, everything framed in harsh light, a harshness that snatched his breath away,

he hadn’t realized how cunning grief could be,laying in wait to strike back and reopen old wounds.

LSF | 55

Winter Greening

I’m an old poet winnowed by loss, oftenshaken & burdened by the morning news,

the unending daily rages of the race & yet someone still thankful to be alive, amazed

at the misty radiance of the reborning sun, its arrows ablaze, clinging, however

waveringly, to the invisible ladder of prayer,longing for the promises of heaven, praising

every victory over meanness & indecency, each poem I write a frail container of hope

waiting to be opened at dawn.

56 | Clarke

Listen, Friend

I write these poems for you who whisperwhy.

Am I just to think I’m a stuffed seabird, tweeting to myself, my wingless breathgrayer than pebbles on a deserted shore?

Take the words, I say,toss them skyward, watchthem catch the sun, rekindle once morethat fire on my tongue.

LSF | 57

Obsession

Sometimes when inspiration beats dead like a slackened drum &the poems won’t come, I crawl

under the sheets at night feelinglow, resolve to give up this “funnykind of jazz” as Berryman called it,

only to wake at dawn to find the the dark dispersed, inspiration once more spilling like a golden purse

outside my window & whole clear skies beckoning like a blank page for me to write on. My heart aligns

with the skies & the realization: this is what I do.

58 | Clarke

Stars

The birds have roosted beneath a stitch of white stars on the black scarf of night.

I enter the infinite silent spaces of the heart.

LSF | 59

DESIGNATED DREAMER

LSF | 61

The Past Still Lives

The old judgehis dream falteringbears the mounting weightof his age.

The law some daysfeels like a great millstone,the litigants spiteful,their lawyers quarrelsome.

When he looks backacross the mist of yearshe sees himself on a far, sunlit hill,a young man, climbing.

LSF | 63

Apollo’s Dream

Apolloconfident in his craftmaster of his fearsdescends into the dankcave where judgescast their spells.

Sentencedto an eternityof probing eyes.

64 | Clarke

Second Thoughts

Every lawyer knew the old judge held sacred his sworn duty torender judgments in accordance with the law, and not to sermonize.Proud of his succinct, clinical decisions, he was more than willing toboast: “My decisions speak for themselves.”

What the lawyers didn’t know and what the judge didn’t tellthem was that he often had second thoughts about his terselycrafted decisions that orbited round his mind during the longevenings at home. Night after night he dreamed of judgmentsrolling off his tongue—no beginnings, no endings—till morningfound him riddled and riled by an onslaught of verbal debris hecouldn’t stop.

LSF | 65

Designated Dreamer

. . . and the dream outlasts Death, and the dreamer will never die.

—R.S. Thomas

I am your designated dreamer,intimate like you with the history

of disappointment, steeped in theshadowlands of sleep, one who

surfs the rag ends of dreams atnight to bring you news of your

buried self, wake you from yourdreamless bed, make you under-

stand there’s nothing solid any-where for you to stand on except

your Shadow, the dark rich earthof your heart.

66 | Clarke

The Long Night

There are worse things than rendering goodjudgments in language only lawyers love;

there are worse things than a judge’s convolutedsyntax holding forth a parched interpretation ofthe law pronounced in the holy name of Justice;

there are worst things than brooding over whatappellate judges might decide the law ought to be.

It’s 3 a.m., after a restless night’s pretense at sleep,when all the judge’s ill-considered judgments, eachof them wearing a long, resentful face, come trooping into his bedroom to confront him, to speak a truth he does not want to hear.

*

I wake from the dark ocean of harrowing dreams to the sound of rock music in the rushing stream sweet-singing the coming of dawn.

Marooned in my dumb-struck state, I spy the white sail of sun poking above the horizon, radiance clinging to its spars, signaling the end of the long night, the time to move on.

—inspired by Fleur Adcock

LSF | 67

A Way Through

Watery voices at the crossroadsa river that whispers in a dark night.

I am left here to walk a path of bones, moon light hollows of stars.

The way uncharted.

—after Bonné de Blas

68 | Clarke

Morning Surprise

After another restless night of fitfulsleep, the scrum of legal wranglingstill roiling in his head, the old judgegot up, rubbed his tired eyes, to finda surprise outside his window:

the moon, a lucent pearl, clingingto the hem of morning, a robinin a tree above, caroling the newlyawakened sun.

LSF | 69

Awakening

Lying in the hammock by the shore all afternoontrolling for inspiration to write a poem, I fall asleep. Wake wrapped in darkness, the faint sound of lapping water, a millionbright eyes winking.

—after Jack Gilbert

70 | Clarke

THE ROAD HOME

LSF | 71

New Spring

After a long gray winter ofdarkness and discontent,clouds lift and the judge, caught off guard,allows his heart to step outside into grace: a sweeping rush of green.

LSF | 73

The Road to Pleasure Bay

Leave the courthouse in the big city where you slog it out eachday, sometimes deciding yes, sometimes no, discontent sizzlingyour blood.

Take the 401 all the way to Belleville, careful to avoid unneces-sary stops and detours, swing north onto highway 62 andcontinue on to Trudy’s, the local store, where you always turnright. You’re now on St. Ola road and not far from your destina-tion. Eventually, make a sharp left turn onto Pleasure Bay Roadand follow its winding bumpy course till you come upon a largeA-frame with a green metallic roof. Now your heart beats slows,the deadweight of law and worry lifts from your brow. You havearrived at a new beginning.

Go down to the lake, breathe the moist clean air and standbeneath the canopy of stars, listening till you begin to hear thesucking sound of gloom disappearing through a million whitepinholes. Shed your city clothes, dive into the bracing waters.Stroke by stroke swim out into grace.

74 | Clarke

Spring Reverie

Sluffing off the torporof winter in my bedin the gray city, I daydream ofLimerick Lake &the hammock by the shore, the choirs of trilliums alongthe winding cottageroad in seamsof quickening earthlifting their smallwhite voicesin praise &where the road curvespast the old abandoned farmhouse, with its rusty claspon the storm door & the slanted morninglight catches the cloudy heads of wild lilacs,I want to stop there& linger among them,the air so inscrutablypure, just breathing.

LSF | 75

Ephemera

Resting undisturbed in their hermetic bulbs

that dark frozen winter, the closed buds

of the amaryllis kept me waiting till late spring when

I awoke one day in May to discover three white

trumpet flowers blooming before my eyes,

only to have my joy turned to grief a few days later

as they commenced their descent back to the darkness

from where they’d come, the story of their beautiful

radiant lightness scarcely begun.

76 | Clarke

Early Morning at the Lake

I awake fromthe tumult of nightly dreams,my head in disarray.

On the horizona Great Blue Heron glides in silence across the bay.

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Limerick Lake Blues

Birds retreat to nests high in the trees

on the silent staircase of air;moon hides

its shining face from me; the perishing fields of night

dwindle to blue specks in the dark, an immensity

with no sides, no depth; nothing grows in this waning light

except absence.

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Desertion

Mother father wife sistersrelatives friends neighbors—pulled mercilessly, even randomlyfrom the ranks of the living,conscripted into that

last dark voyage.

Baffled, I am left to endurea world I scarcely recognize—forced to live this remorseless

unraveling of the heart.

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To Carry Death

Sometimes I carry death in my arms; often she’s closer to me than my bones.

Sometimes I go outside peer into smoke-coloured clouds, the color of desperation, hoping to glimpse the bright promises of heaven.

How could I have ever imagined I would stray so far, be kept waiting so long in this blizzard of Eden.

80 | Clarke

Dark Wood

In the middle of a life is a dark wood.

—Dante

Celestial navigation awry,we slog along, waist deep indarkness, no wayside inns, no alibis, our blood turnedcold as ice water.

There’s nothing we can do but name the path we took, plead our case, beg the mercy of the court.

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A Matter of Age

Something has slowed up in me.

Claimed by stasis, whispers, shadows,my future unmasked, life now iswhat happens to others. There’s nothingleft for me to do, but dream.

82 | Clarke

Elegy for a Dead Poet

Poets seek the glistening verb, as my old friend put it, “art that imparts a sense of meaning.”

You sent your songs into the world not for fame or tinsel praise, but to free the mind, ignite the spark of imagination, createa lasting form of desire made permanent.

O poet, now that you’ve crossed that dark Lethean river, do you still dream ofthe perfect glistening verb?

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Turning 80

Showers abbreviate the airon this third ring of the sun;a cloud-capped arch morphs into a rainbow.

As the speed of life confounds me, I teach mygray heart to sing: go slow, go slow, go slow,and learn to inhale, exhale in the blazing Now of this, our once-only,gratitude—a blessing white as vapour on my breath.

Each day, the last day.

84 | Clarke

JAMES CLARKE

James Clarke was born in Peterborough, Ontario, attended McGillUniversity and Osgoode Hall. He practiced law in Cobourg, Ontario beforehis appointment to the Bench in 1983 where he served as a judge of theSuperior Court of Ontario. He is now retired and resides in Guelph, insouthwestern Ontario, 100 kilometers west of Toronto.

Clarke is the author of eight collections of poetry: Silver Mercies (ExileEditions, 1997), The Raggedy Parade (Exile Editions, 1998), The AncientPedigree of Plums (Exile Editions 1999), The Way Everyone Is Inside (ExileEditions, 2000), Flying Home Through the Dark (Exile Editions, 2001), Howto Bribe a Judge: Poems from the Bench (Exile Editions, 2002), ForcedPassage: A Short History of Hanging (Exile Editions, 2005), Dreamworks:New and Selected Poems (Exile Editions, 2008). Clarke is also the author oftwo memoirs: A Mourner's Kaddish: Suicide and the Rediscovery of Hope(Novalis, 2006) and The Kid from Simcoe Street (Exile Editions, 2012), andL'Arche Journal: A Family's Experience in Jean Vanier's Community(Griffin House, 1973).

Two previous collections of Clarke’s poems, The Juried Heart and All theBroken Places were published in the Legal Studies Forum in 2012 and2013.

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