Hawthorne in Tuckerton

Hawthorne in Tuckerton


Like the other great ones he wouldn't
vanish into his own destiny,
kept showing up
in different parts of America,
small pious towns like this one,
wooded, where he trusted
that what thumped in the human heart
would manifest, make its old nightly rounds.
Scratch an American,he was overheard saying
at the diner,and you'll find a Puritan.
And one man nodded while another
in a John Deere cap swallowed hard,
changed the subject to the Phillies.
Hawthorne still loved the repressed,
the avoided. Nothing made him more
alert than a large passion twisted,
coiled in the recesses of an innocent.
But something had changed.
People camped without fear
in the piney forest,
were simply amused by tales
of the Jersey Devil.
And Tuckerton now had its Seaport.
Its Dimmesdales
and Rappacinis had a stake in the market.
Their daughters wore lipstick
and openly danced to loud music.
Hawthorne began to feel like the ghost
he was. Grace, he lamented,
was once so poignant
before this democratization of the sacred.
Adultery so much more interesting
when everyone didn't commit it.


Stephen Dunn

Posted over on Quarterly West