Pete Duel’s Poetry

by Peter Deuel

Listen to Pete Duel Reads His Poetry

Life

When I see those pine trees oh so high
Stretching up to reach the sky
I no longer wonder at that mystery:
God’s creation of you and me.

Life and death, so often feared
Is by nature so beautifully cleared.
When one observes the leaves in fall
Where is no solemn deathly pall
But a brightness and color that means but one thing
That life is restored the following spring.

Death is not the end of all
Yet just the close of a glorious fall
To be followed as soon as one’s faith has been sought
By that eternal spring for which us God has wrought.

aged 16

Musings of a Western New
Yorker in Southern California

How I miss the crisp, golden smell of Fall
Pheasants half-clucking, half-honking their silly call
in back of the house.
The haze of leaf fires hanging in the air
are comforting fuzzy for annual thumb suckers.
Occasional boom of shotguns, fired not in hatred.
A wide-eyed child anticipation
of bringing home a trophy for the little woman.
The little woman creating a masterpiece
out of cold, dead fowl, stale bread, bitter cranberries
and dirt-encrusted potatoes.
A sharp crunch of thick green grass underfoot,
starched and glazed the night before.
By now the moles and woodchucks have retired,
leaving the birds to forage alone.
We would build a fire and smile,
once more in wonder of the coming freeze.

November 1963

Listen to the song by Andrea Louise
inspired by this poem.

Glen Canyon Eulogy

Now I weep with unknown brothers
for our land I never knew.

Land once taken, gone forever
raped and stolen from our view.

Time and distance, culture different,
that decided I not see
land now taken, gone forever.

By the white skin.
Weep now, white skin.

By the white skin,
you and me.

The Work Resembled a Smash of
Cottage Cheese and Rotten Fruit —
Food for Thought

“Madam, your son has just been shot between the eyes;
please tell us in your own words why he died.”
And madam must produce an answer or
her son has disappeared
like so much peanut butter and jelly
on a Saturday afternoon
eleven years before.

“Get off my back Corporal. He’s dead. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean, why?”
And Corporal must produce an answer or
his buddy has disappeared
like so much PX beer
eleven months before.

“I’ll be straight with you soldier,
you’ve lost that leg.
But with luck your right arm will be
as good as new.”
And because soldier couldn’t find
the answer polished for him
11,000 miles away,
he took a .45 and decorated the wall
with his brains.

1965

Love
An infinitesimal piece of star break
that drifts into consciousness,
entering in pastel ways,
to become simply,
love

1965

We Got

We got filthy air and air is all.
We got rotten rivers and water is air.
We got strangled streets and beer can highways,
crowded rooms and fume-filled flyways.
We got crap on our minds.

We got commercial this and billboard that,
neon thin and neon fat.
Yeah, we got beauty but it’s all in books,
or on some screen or where no one looks,
because it’s too far out of town.

Now, what are we gonna do?
The sky is blue but you have to look
straight up to see it.
And air is all,
all we got.

August 1969

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