In my dreams he stood as tall as my family’s church.
His feet were as big as the cars parked across the street.
The hems of his robe picked up bits of rust and birch.
His granite-colored wings were wide as a city block.
His eyes were constantly scanning the horizon.
I prayed for strength against names thrown like rocks,
but no one ever responded. I left town for good.
My family’s church was eventually dismantled.
Who knew that money could be stronger than blood?
He is no longer standing proudly above the skyline.
The entire town has become a crime scene.
His body, when felled, was too big to chalk in outline.
The ghost of his sky-wide wings still beat shadows
that whisper, Coulda-coulda-coulda, as he lights
each dream of prayer awaiting the sun’s glow.
Far From Atlantis: Poems
Raymond Luczak juxtaposes elements from mythology and the supernatural against his childhood memories growing up in Ironwood, Michigan.
In Far from Atlantis, Raymond Luczak makes use of traditional poetic forms to tell the stories of two vastly different worlds: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which often looks like an island on the map, and the fabled island of Atlantis. The poems in this collection are rooted in the natural world, with the power of water as a means for escaping the cruelty and tedium of an ableist society…
