Clark Soden

If this was the gods’ idea for Clark’s end of life, it was a hurtful one. Clark (CJ) died from an auto crash on June 4, 2023.

Born to Kay Douglas Soden, deceased, and Mary Laubach Soden in Ashtabula, Ohio, Oct. 1, 1959, he died at Emmanuel Hospital in Portland, Ore., from injuries in a car crash on Highway 84. He was returning to his home in The Dalles, Ore.

He had been a successful tennis player in his youth, enjoyed hobby collecting and gardening, and his friendship with his brothers Andrew, deceased, and Stephen J. Soden, and his nieces and nephews. He planted each spring a small garden wherever he was living. He worked in golf course maintenance most of his life and, as a result, lost his hearing from the machinery necessary to his work.

What best describes him is a day set to poetry from Clark’s life. The speaker here is his mom.

 

DAY TRIP

I could live worry-less, like luck,

Certain as an old mother shell,

A scallop off of Cape Lookout

Ride the knot of rubble-drift

All eyes on the end of my ribs

Shoreward, safe from the immovable Port.

 

Instead, in a circle of rusted chrome,

The third passenger in my son Clark’s car,

I identify with anchor bolts. He drives

Without license, insurance or

Monthly money; one hand wheels us

Toward the estuary, his other exterminates

Henry-baby’s fleas. The spaniel drools.

 

CJ (Clark) seeks fellow sea stars, those with

Limbs stolen. His stealth mimics eel grass

Thick enough to nearly subdue the back tracking tide:

Amateur seaologist ankle deep in mirth

He shouts to the sky,

“Symbiosis, symbiosis.”

Foam and a weave of water outlines

The map of his five toed feet,

Ocean Giants must know him.

 

The sea never gives up producing —

Throws at my feet torn away wreckage

Consolation I’ll carry home.

(He’ll switch to Ohio and Lake Erie’s perch)

Broken symmetry a reminder,

One perfect day

On Oregon’s coast.