Three Superb Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

A Shadow on Your Brow

 

“Your hands are empty and so are your eyes.”

 

Charles Simic

 

Here in moonlight, you watch the dark lake.

All morning you heard nothing but jays 

fighting for scraps. You walked the dog far out 

past the ruined cabin, past the icy spring 

where water tastes like rock and steel. 

You came back tired at lunchtime, and you ate 

half a sandwich, drank a glass of milk. 

Your hands are empty and so are your eyes. 

There’s a shadow on your brow, a quiet buzzing 

in your ears. How long has that been there? 

You would say months or years, now that time 

has slipped its reins and clouds hang like bags 

of ice twisting on their ropes in the evening sky. 

 

 

The Promised Land

 

Hard work done, we rode in the bed of the pickup truck, 

six boys heading out of town. 

It was summer, ball caps pulled down over our eyes. 

We were headed to The Promised Land,

which is what our bosses called the lake front 

where they took us for a treat.

That couldn’t have been its real name, 

but what did we care?

There were blueberry bushes in the woods 

and a little store that sold soda and ice cream bars.

There was a dock with silvery canoes. 

Sometimes we saw girls from a distance, up the hill.

Always, there were dogs scrabbling along the beach. 

A man rode a horse through the shallows as evening fell. 

He shouted toward the darkened shore. 

Drunk or in love, he leaned on the gelding’s neck,

like the last horseman pounding toward the end of days. 

 

 

Gravity Was Everywhere Then

 

I tripped over a kid playing basketball,

tore my pants and knew I was in for it 

when I got home. 

I dropped my notebook, lost my pen 

when it tumbled from my hand. 

My feet had outgrown my body 

and I tripped again and again, 

over roots, over stones, 

over nothing at all. My elbows 

and knees were scarred with scabs. 

Once I fell out of a tree 

and broke my arm. The doctor 

called it a green stick fracture, 

and it made me feel like a plant.

I fell off a horse, just slowly slipped 

out of the saddle. People applauded. 

They thought I was performing  a trick. 

I jumped off a garage roof, broke my nose 

diving off the high board, rolled down a hill 

as if  a dybbuk were chasing me

on a moonless night. 

Gravity was everywhere then.

Whatever I tossed in the air came hurtling back. 

I scurried for cover in a rain of balls and bricks.

Steve Klepetar lives in the Shire (Berkshire County, in Massachusetts, that is). His work has appeared widely and has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Family Reunion and The Li Bo Poems.

Steve Klepetar is waiting out the winter and the pandemic in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.