The Sunday Poet: Llyn Clague

Llyn Clague

Llyn Clague is a poet based in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.  His poems have been published widely, including in Ibbetson Street, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, and other magazines.  His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in September, 2014.  Visit www.llynclague.com

The Lined Pad

Stung again,

I sit with ancient envy

and a pad,

a pad lined like a keyboard,

the cold black-and-white instrument

my always older sister, as a child,

used so brilliantly to grab love –

a pad, whose slat-like rows,

blank with potential, stretch to the far edge,

and, from last night,

a memory that evokes, instead of envy

and its darker sisters fear and greed,

light –

a memory, after we both,

in our old age, confessed to depression,

blank with possibles and stretching out far, too far, out to the edge –

of her saying that,

however dark the despair,

by sitting at the piano and playing,

improvising, toying, almost doodling, she could lift

it;

however briefly.