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Only Child

Adam Clay

Breakfast rained on again,

and I’m lifted up the stairs

on the breath of what

the dark of the day

might promise in its

perfect silence. The light

in my daughter’s room

has been on all night

like every night,

but the sun shifting

changes the shape

of the space from

a square into an unfolding

universe. I had always

imagined a different type

of fatherhood before

fatherhood found me, but if you

asked me to describe it now,

I don’t think I could

find the words. Try to find

a way to describe living

a few different ways at once.

For a while I imagined

there would be more attempts

at trying out what I’m still

trying to see in the room

that’s gone power out,

but the weeds in the yard

grow too quickly to be left

alone for long. I had forgotten

the strangeness of a humid

February. I had forgotten

all that makes up the memories

that need me to exist. It was

easier to carve out a place

before I had words to describe

it. Now looking back feels

like looking forward. I am

drawing a self-portrait

and trying to remove the self.

Adam Clay is the author of Stranger (Milkweed Editions, 2016), A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012), and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006).

Themes

About this Poem

“I tend to overthink things a bit, and this poem was born from many early mornings meditating on parenthood and all it contains: the joy and wonder, the missteps and mistakes. In the end, the poem offers another option to the dark directive of Larkin’s ‘This Be the Verse.’ I don’t always know what I’m doing, but I hope I’m doing the best I can.”

—Adam Clay

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More by this poet

The Terror of Flight

Good morning mess of stars
just out of sight

and other things we choose
to make invisible with
the promise of their own design.

Reflections may chisel its strange song,

but think of skin
worn down under

the mass of
its panic (or purpose)

but not the trajectory
of missile fire scarring the sky.

Why must “missile” contain
the word “miss,” as if built into its

horror is the assurance
it will land

where it shouldn’t? Think
of a pointed word or a smoothed stone

Adam Clay

2018

How the World Began

The years of the locust tree
Split open with ease,
But I had no ax—
It was lost to the snow.
Let’s make up a story
Of how we arrived here.
Because of its ability to create,
The mind must do the opposite.
I always liked missing you,
Stirring the coals with only
The action of my mind.
To split wood, one must consider
The direction of the grain.
Sometimes the mornings
Remind me of how
Dickinson imagined Heaven,
But what of Heaven
Without the world, the dirt,
And the turn of the head
To a sound distant in the woods?

Adam Clay

2018

Directive for Ascension

Let the words we frame and chisel contain
the same language of those before and those
to come. If this moment is a place, let rain drift
to an elsewhere. Let our arrivals rise up
like the Estivant Pines. Let atoms
be atoms. Let song be song. If a moment
gone-by does not return, let the breath of a streamline

Adam Clay

2018

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Only Child

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