Secret of Fight
The Crow
In the Spring
Mosquitoes at Sunset
In dreams I remember
the secret of flight, which is
really no secret at all
but a kind of body
memory, which is
really no body at all,
but simply a rising
above the careworn
landscape of wherever
I am, remembering up,
always up, like a skater
who must forget
hard ice and gravity.
Even in July, on a
cloudy morning with
the temperature down
30 degrees from the
brutal 100 of
the previous week, when
the crow calls
its lonely,
urgent syllable
of ice and sharp obsidian,
its voice
all broken vowels
and hard-edged crockery,
I know
the days are shrinking
by degrees,
and that the year
is headed to its close.
In the spring, when kings go off to war,
David sent his army out, but he remained
to haunt the palace in Jerusalem.
It happened one late afternoon, that he,
tired of being pent up on the throne,
was taking in some air up on the roof
and spied Bathsheba bathing from afar.
It hurts my heart to know what happens next.
The wheels fall off, and he forgets himself.
He takes the women, has the husband killed.
And how is this the thing on God’s own heart?
It’s not. He was a man, whose vanity
had made him think he was above the fray,
a law unto himself, and he was wrong.
It’s somehow worse to know how things turn out,
than he repents and yet the baby dies.
It won’t sting much or for long, but it’s the price you pay
for watching the sun go down the far side of the bay.
Those delicate winged vampires patrol for flesh
and start to drink so gently you would never guess
that soon the urge to scratch will pierce your soul.
But even so, to watch this canvas stain from blue to pink,
to feel its fire melting down the sky, the ember-lonely whole
ablaze with the lights and colors that you know would sink
even the hardest veteran of some foreign war.
For he’s the one who owns the land, come hell or flood,
and on this bit of ground, deep into his final tour,
the man looks salted down, or pickle brined, a knotty wood
from some exotic tree, the way the weathered bristles
lap his face, and this is worth his aged, imperfect blood.
Peter William Richetti, age 54, of High Bridge, NJ, passed away on Saturday, August 2, 2014 at the Hunterdon Medical Center in Raritan Twp. He was born on March 15, 1960 in Red Bank, NJ. He had been a resident of High Bridge, for the past 19 years, after moving from St. Louis, MO. Peter and his beloved wife, Rita Durkin Richetti, were married for 31 wonderful years.
He earned his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He also received his MFA and MA from Washington University in St Louis, MO. He worked for DG3 Printing in Jersey City. Through the years he published poems in such magazines as American Poetry Review and Alaska Quarterly Review to name a few.
Peter was a member of Vineyard Community Church in Morris Plains. He was active in the church’s youth ministry and mission work. Peter was the rock of his family and a safe harbor for anyone who needed him. He loved the arts. He especially enjoyed writing and painting. He was very comical and known for his dry sense of humor. Most of all, Peter loved spending time with his grandsons who knew him as ‘Papa.’
We miss our friend.
.
