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.