Tom Clark, 77

I'm a little late with this, as with all else, but the poet Tom Clark died August 23 at age 77, three days after being struck by an auto near his home in Berkeley.

I didn't discover the info until I went to his blog, Beyond the Pale, and noticed that the last entry was written on August 18. I had a hunch and searched for the worst and immediately found this Times obit.

This was Clark's second run-in with a car on a busy street near his pad. Surviving the first accident, he complained about the uptick in traffic on his street. The first accident put him down for a month or more, and it is just damn weird and tragic that a similar accident ended his life.

I had a short and lively exchange of emails with Clark six years ago as Round Bend Press brought out a pair of poetry books by Charles and Bill Deemer. Clark wrote to tell me how much he liked the work.

"Those Deemer boys really know how to write," he said.

Indeed. And so did Tom Clark, RIP.

TS