Jean Tucker

Thasos

The sea would throw its stones
against my balcony and rake them back again.
In the gizzard of sleep I would toss all night.

If I waited long enough
morning would come.
I would hear the cough and sputter
of the country bus waking up, the father
calling good-bye, putting the engine in gear
for the first trip around the island

and the mother and daughter would come
with glasses of fresh orange juice and a broom
to sweep the bad dreams out of the corners,
to mop the floor tiles white,
to pinch dead blooms off the geraniums,

to speak to me in a language
of which I understood all
except the words.

—Jean Tucker, first published in First View of Mesolonghi (Grex Press,2004).
Reprinted by permission of the author.

My association with the Green River Writers has given me much; among the best gifts my friendship with Jean Tucker. I am pleased to see that more of her work is getting out there for the world to read.

Jean teaches English as a Second Language at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville and has been a writer-in-residence at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska. Her poem “From an Armament Museum” was a finalist for The Heartland Review‘s 2009 Joy Bale Boone prize. You can read “Eddie Leaves His Wife” at the Tipton Poetry Journal.