Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

Concert in the Park

 

Three swans glide by, giving the mallard crowd 

a wide berth. I turn away 

from the river, where I have been sitting all day.

Tonight there will be music beneath the willow trees, 

an Irish band playing the old songs.

Bring your own chair, there will be snacks for sale.

The ferry will come, as it always does.

Everyone will crowd on board, offering their coins.

Their hands will smell of copper and blood.

Into the moonlight they will go, 

vanishing as minor chords fade in summer air.

 

 

Coloured Squares

 

I look at summer and it’s already gone.

Somewhere the sun has burned trees to gold.

Somewhere a woman’s arms are full of fruit - 

melons and apples and pears.

Her portrait hangs in a museum, where tourists 

thrust their fingers into certain sculptures 

as guards whistle and tut. They take photos 

of the princess on her throne. 

All day they line up to eat, 

with their appetites and credit cards. 

The woman whose arms are full 

of fruit has stepped out of her frame. 

She has let melons ripen by the door, 

feeds apples to her pony, pears to her striped cat. 

My mother hates this museum because 

some of the paintings are not beautiful. 

She hates the spiral stairs, would rather see 

photographs of her native city, 

especially in rain or snow. She loves 

how streetlights bend on wet cobblestones, 

but no one lives there now, 

a city of coloured squares, each one drawn by hand.

 

 

A Different Name

 

Each of us called it by a different name —

X-ray or Sun Spot or Microwave.

Some of us want back to Latin, called it 

Vir Fortis or Rex. I preferred Dea or Mater Anima, 

but that was when I stood alone in the wind.

 

In the end it didn’t matter. It rose in the sky 

like a new star, and though at first we wondered 

and worried over signs, we soon forgot it was there, 

went back to our phones as if it were nothing at all, 

an object without the terrible weight of names.

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.