Hunter is mourning the loss of local poet and humorist Dennis Lucas Jr., son of the town's current supervisor, who died last Monday at the age of 42. WGXC's Paul Smart has a tribute, which hints at a battle with substance abuse:
“He was a talented guy but he had troubles with coping with all life throws our way,” said his father this week. “We’re losing the war on drugs.”
The river is moving.
The black-bird must by flying.
The kite is stealing groceries.
The crow must be at the moviesSo he wrote. And so he touched many lives, here and everywhere he landed.
It looks like in these lines, quoted from Lucas's Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Crow, the poet was poking a bit of fun at the considerably more buttoned-up modernist Wallace Stevens, whose poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" was published in 1917.
Here's another cheerfully self-deprecatory fragment of Lucas's, published in the Chronogram last year, called "Interrupted Haiku":
A bee
hovers
around merealizing
I'm no flower
Lucas's obituary in the Daily Mail has the details on his memorial service, scheduled for this Saturday:
Calling hours and a Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, Dec. 11th at Aston-Basagic Funeral Home, Main St., Hunter, NY 12442 from 1:00-3:00 p.m.
