Monday 29 May 2023

Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 



The Markets of Eternity


Sometimes I just want to window-shop 

in the markets of eternity.


Sometimes the puzzles don’t make any sense.

My father regarded anything he could read 


as an obligation, something to try his memory.

He never forgot a thing, but to get him to recite


took hours of persuasion. 

Essentially he was a modest man, 


not shy but unwilling to put himself forward, 

unless he could ease someone’s pain. 


Of course he was good with children, 

which I must confess, made me jealous. 


Once I stole a puff of his cigar. 

Another time I sipped his dry martini 


when he left it on the table near his books.

He used bookmarks made of sticky notes, 


read eight or nine novels at a time. 

Our house resembled a warehouse or a library. 


He cooked frankfurters and beans 

every Thursday night when my mother 


went to the movies alone. 

Together they lived in a cold, unusual dream.




Twenty Questions


Some time when the river is ice ask me 

mistakes I have made.


William Stafford


Ask me why I stand before the mirror, preening in my old age.

Ask me why, even now, the sap runs as maples 

leaf out in passionate rage.

Ask why so many people stumble down my road 

in the morning, with wind tearing through trees.

I will offer you something to drink, coffee perhaps, 

or green tea if you plan to live forever. 

Maybe a glass of Chardonnay if the hour is right, 

and some nuts to nibble on. You can ask me then 

why I spend my day gobbling words, why I hold my terror in, 

listening to the soothing symphonies I love. 

Ask me, and I will feel your questions like a knife 

held at my throat in some dark alley on a dangerous midnight street.




The River of What Used to Be


When your body trembles and turns 

to mist, when your mother calls 

again and again from a third floor window, 

when girls toss their jacks in the air 

and sundown crashes through the hedge, 

when all that happens, 

you are nailed to the past, 

your mind floating on the river

of what used to be. 

When birds gather in bare branches 

of the river birch, 

when frogs shiver by the frozen pond, 

when a boat sails through fog 

as cameras click, when you can’t sleep 

for thinking of money and gold, 

your father sends for you. 

He has stern advice, a notebook 

you should keep, a stack of folders 

you can add to the cabinet on the floor. 

When the door closes, don’t look back. 

A hailstorm drives in from the east.

Windows shatter as you turn away from home.



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


Flaubert







Steve Klepetar lives and writes in the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

 

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