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Paperback: 32 pages
This collection of poems opens with a stumble: 'It was not there / until I tripped over it.' But this is fitting because John Lee Clark bounces back, as he always does, artfully and unexpectedly, to make an astonishing statement. Snowballs, his long white cane, pears, Braille, bedsheets, sign language, and even morning light come alive in this deaf-blind poet's hands like they have never before. Thanks to his sparkling language, his intellectual playfulness, and his capacity for wonder, together with his unique perceptions of life, his poems add a much-needed new wrinkle to the lexicon of imagination. What he reflects on, others cannot see in the same way again, and that includes the poet himself: We understand that he is like the rest of humankind in all the most important ways. Long Goodbyes
I miss all of the long goodbyes
when it was time to go. Someone would sign
the bowls of our hands offering
before anyone stands up.
through our house, pausing
and touch more things with our hands.
unwilling to open the front door,
before going gently into the night.
but pause to flash in the Deaf way,
to light switches for our house
Now that I am grown
when it is time to go. Sign, do sign
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