Thursday, September 30, 2010

New Broadside of Jim Dunn's Poem, 'Father Of Night'

A mixture of polymer plate and wood type printed on the Vandercook




Father Of Night

Clouds so swift,
they roll and kiss
forming a perfect
smoky sculpture
of my father on his deathbed.
Out to sea, miles off
the coast of Gloucester
I see his slack
jawed open mouth
robbed of speech,
without a vocabulary.

Each breath a lifetime
of forgotten childhoods
An eyebrow raised
formed by the shadows
The pained expression
in rolling white plumes

Out of the water,
into the sky on a string,
a dying haddock lands
at the end of his fight,
gaffed and mouthing a kiss -
sad desperate O's,
just to try to breathe again.

Outside

The blue sea water
as he flops on the deck.

Twice I've felt
the spirit of a man
dying pass directly
through me;
once, my ear to his lips
awaiting a secret
or a final kiss.
The other, my hand
on his heart
as it fluttered as wings
on a trapped thing,
then ceased to beat.
The sad broken bagpipe
exhale of the last breath
so intimate in my ear
and slow to end
an ocean wind whistling
through the attics
of winter.


Broadside Poem By James Dunn of Beverly MA.
Father Of Night” From ...
Printed at Old Crow Press, September, 2010.

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