Three Superb Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

"Let us intoxicate ourselves on ink, since we lack the nectar of the gods." 

Flaubert 

The Ruined House

 

Once I visited a ruined house out in the country. 

It had an abandoned well with stone sides 

and splintery boards nailed over the opening. 

There were gaps between the wall studs, 

large holes torn in the roof. We were a dozen 

little kids, just six or seven that summer.

Someone brought us there to play. I’m serious, 

though they warned us not to lean over the stones, 

to be careful on the derelict steps. 

What did we do for hours in the tall grass? 

I remember chipmunk holes and red newts 

on a flat rock. It’s hard to believe this happened, 

though nobody died. We were long gone by the time 

the sun went down. We crossed the road together, 

our small hands linked in a human chair. 

A green pickup stopped, and a bearded man 

sat patiently as we went by. He didn’t drum his fingers 

or honk or wave, and when he drove off, we were glad 

to see his red taillights as the truck slipped into low gear, 

growled up hill toward the horse farm by the county line.

 

 

 

Blood Moon

 

I call to your shadow in the only voice 

we understand, a vocalization of blood 

and breath. I call out into the night 

of the blood moon, the night of frogs. 

 

Wind tears branches from the river birch. 

Across the lake, lights blink like tiny fires 

on the shore. I call out into the night 

of wind, the night of angels dancing, 

the night of echoes and memory and joy. 

 

I call and you answer. 

The long night has something to say 

about cracking earth and magma rising

from the pit. I call out and you respond. 

Hand in hand we tear ourselves from dreams. 

 

As Stars Appear

 

On the hill golden leaves, 

and leaves like flame. 

Afternoon sun burns 

treetops in the chilly air.

 

The only thing missing 

is smoke and cloud.

 

A door opens, leading 

to a meadow where crows 

plot among the boney trees.

 

I have fallen into a dream 

of water rising 

through grass, like music 

in a stairwell as the stars appear.

 

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.