Lucas Hunt
Villa Sciarra

                   Where eyes become the sunlight, and the hand
                   is worthy of water… Richard Wilbur

Forget about fountains and wrecked temples,
marketplace ghosts shopping in eternity,
dead souls sleep in the riverbed,
the circus is empty, Caius built a pyramid
and futility shows us nothing
but what exists.

Fast sounds slide past yet no one's there,
people collapse, shoes are ruined,
hungry eyes burn
as the park, high on hill, appears
like ultimate arrival;
for angels, saints, columns, and domes
are worth the voyage far from home.

Wicked statues dance out hedges,
cherubs mock all seriousness,
a satyr and centaur prancing the garden
search for partners, the path opens
to solitary oblivion with a view
which is a great time, if you can stand it.

Watching Horses

                   for Mary French

Lovers call from the green
that is wild and transcendent
(no limit to the scope of summer).
The sunlight features
dresses dancing from tents,
elegant free for all of bourbon
and champagne, ladies and men
laugh as life casually passes,
nosing the very air
for fragrances of perfume,
for a new way to be.
When the horses come out,
trot to field in gallant displays
of thigh over leg, each
coat a ribbed finery,
sable coursers lunge up field
with calm fury, as I drift
and dream of waves,
then toast the perfect day.

_ _

Lucas Hunt was born in rural Iowa, and is the author of Light on the Concrete, published in 2011 to critical acclaim. His poetry and writing have appeared in The New York Times, East Hampton Star, Slice, Fiction Writers Review, and Red Branch. Hunt studied at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, and in the MFA. program at Southampton College. He is the recipient of a John Steinbeck Award for poetry, and lives in East Hampton, New York, where he works at a literary agency.

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