D.A. Lucas is a poet and expat from Youngstown, Ohio, living in Changchun, China, where he teaches composition and rhetoric at Rutgers University Newark Institute’s business school at NENU. His most recent works have appeared in Barking Sycamores, The Blue Nib, and Three Line Poetry, and he has work forthcoming in Amethyst Review.
At my father’s funeral:
When I leaned in
to kiss you
I paused,
in death,
both eyes, weary,
looking you over
until,
like gliding gulls,
they stopped along
your skull,
to rest for what
seemed a while,
taking you in
once more:
Pale like dunes,
dusted in broken
shells with wisps
of dry
brush, dancing
in the wind of
my sea salt
breath, your head’s
heroic shape,
was sinking away,
bit by bit,
from the encroaching,
forever lapping waves,
stealing all
the ground I knew,
forcing me out to sea,
beating against the storm
with all the strength
you gave me.