Brian Lutz: “Rip”
RIP
The wave, silk and blade,
weighs its impossible weight
on the child, wants to take,
like Yeats’s faeries, boy from
family. I can see the chase in
the father’s legs, but he waits
and stays in the sand, his eyes
against the sharp tide.
His son’s play is a sacred
thing. To interrupt, to come
blundering in like sudden
Poseidon to the foreign world
of his son’s inventions—to insert
himself among the selkies
and sirens, to touch a world
that, just then, had no water,
no father, no boardwalk, had
only the sovereign of Make-Believe,
only the fascist of fantasy,
is to forever end the daft, magical
kingdom and to save his life.
Brian Lutz teaches at Delaware Valley University. In 2003 he was named Poetry Laureate of Bucks County, PA. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Slate, Potomac Review, Louisville Review, Poetry East, Cider Press Review, Poet Lore, Apple Valley Review, and Cimarron Review. Lutz lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two kids and three cats.