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Duane Tucker
Leaf Bath: An Incantation (for Bob’s loss)
come it is autumn season of bittersweet touchable fire
come to this chapel in the stream where trees reach up
like silent prayers and maples ripple like stained glass
come to this altar where the air overflows with light
strip off the rags of want and have and cleanse
your soul in lather of lavender and raspberry-lime
come rinse away your sadness here where the stream
tongue-bathes the stars — come alone whenever you feel alone
come even when clouds devour the sun our light is lighter
than light brighter than cheer — see how we quiver at your gaze
we are so glad you’re here even our downed dun brothers are
dancing we have given our lives to this work let us scrub away
the screaming until we reach the heart of hurt the fields
where the moon-frosted berries grow and night drifts serene
as after-rain here we’re here, come here . . . right here. . . .
The Granite Years (for Dad)
Bent over his walker like an October cornstalk, he inches after me to the door.
I'm the last of the family to go. He'll be alone with his nurse
the rest of the holiday. He holds the door with his good hand,
reaches with his withered other to shake again.
It hangs halfway, frail as a cloud. He stares at the blotched,
useless flesh — a child who has yet to learn what a hand is.
He reached for me ever since my first steps, but I was always
reaching for the wild.
He blinks like a trapped animal, musters a bewildered smile.
I take his hand — and like petals tugged
by a sudden gust, tears rise. His and mine. I squeeze hard.
The granite years are dissolving still.
It’s not until the cab pulls away that I realize:
not once have I seen him near tears.
I look back. He’s gripping his walker with his good arm,
trying to wave with the other.
My God, I may never see him again. I want to leap out and run back.
Give him a new arm, new legs, new marbles; mine if I could —
anything to soothe the scald. But I have a plane to catch
and we each have our grace to get, the hard way.
He gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
The cab rounds the corner and he’s gone. I stare
at the windshield: branches clutch, sidewalks
lurch, splinters of sky phosphor, flee.
Derelict Mass (for Dad)
After the call, I clutched the balcony railing overlooking
the Mexican Riviera, watching pelicans tilt and ride; gulls
on the jetty complaining about the usual: lack, loss.
I stood a long, long time as the sea,
the old and wrinkled sea, kept waving goodbye.
No more badminton in the pink, sticky evenings, no more ping-pong
in the cool cellar, no more gritty egg-salad at Jones Beach, or home
runs at Yankee Stadium. No more walks
or talks or rare treasured winks. The pelicans wheeled and dove.
I had to join them.
I raced down the stairs the way we used to race when he’d let me win:
surf-slap and suds, delicious and degenerate
as drifting into the noon mass on Sunday — the one
he wryly labeled “derelict.” How the sea donned her blue-green chasuble,
singing as she incensed. How the sun spread his arms in benediction.
And when the rough prayers dried, I kept up the service in a hammock —
a true derelict mass: prone and wasted and waltzing backward.
The sea went on saying her sermon. The stars peeked in
to pay their respects. We sent him all the good we could muster.
And suddenly, hovering over me like a stilled and holy breeze,
my God, he was there.
I reached up and put my arms around him, and we swayed
together over the prayer blue sea —
scratch of his six o’clock shadow, peppermint breath,
press of his pocket watch — swayed the way I’d wished
we’d swayed all my life.
Our Mother
who makes art in soil,
blessed be your name in hiccups
of sun on stream, and oak leaves
who brave the cutlass
of winter to see their green
children spring.
Your will be done in ducks
splashing and puddles
bearing chalices of light
down to the creatures of the undersong.
Give us your stillness and April
branches waving to the nearing
sun. Forgive
our unblessed bird songs,
our flowers unadored
as we forgive storms. Lead us
not into greed’s torpor, but deliver
us to gusty nights that tear clouds
from your star-flesh,
so we can ravish each other till dawn.
Meditation (for Bess’s 98th )
In the deepest
vaults of night
the sea whispers
at the kisses of stars;
the gulls balance
on the fingertips
of the wind,
listening. . . .
Déjà Vu
Some blinding spring day in winter,
saturated with sunlight,
quivering the way fawns quiver
to quit wild fur and come close;
I will reach out and trap the forever
fugitive déjà vu—this Is that is all
and forever
lost — which sleeks through my heart
like a quick, butter-
colored bird, leaving the shadow
of its kiss in a fissure
of yearning.
Soul (for Jonah)
Not only the forest of Her that opens like a sun-speckled
secret to the shy little city boy. Not only the edgy-grace of Sunday
hawks, but jasmine and honeysuckle running just to run.
Not only. . . . What? Where is She? Still a moment. Sway.
Feel the dove-clutch of Her: each cell running,
reaching for each other with dawn in their eyes.
Not only Her sea-foam flesh, Her smile chummy as clouds,
but those blossomed arms of Her’s holding the little boy, as he swayed atop
his uncle’s hay wagon, shouting and singing to the grain-fragrant wind.
Hold on to something. Anything. She’s there
in the quiver – inside the tissue of the heart, closer than breath,
than thought.
There in the quivering hand of the little boy, out early on his birthday,
tiptoeing up to open the mail box, the chippie in the tree
hovering to see how he makes out.
There whenever we look for Her: skipping over the fields with rings
of robins’ song, Her pockets filled with the rightest wrongs,
the sweetest scars.
Duane Tucker is an ex-pat American poet. In a previous incarnation, he sold several screenplays and appeared in over seventy films and TV shows. Abandoning Hollywood just before Hollywood abandoned him, he wrote a one-man show on John Muir and toured with it for several years.
Needless to say, Tinseltown worked up a taste for writing criticism, which he took to with relish when he settled in Dundas, Canada. His poetry has been widely published. Passager Magazine voted him poet of the year 2002.
For more of his work please visit Poetry of the Soul.
Copyright © 2007 by Duane Tucker. All Rights Reserved.
This page was published in May 2007.
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