Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

Queen of Maples

 

Beyond the fence, boys ride two-wheelers round 

and around the empty street, like dolphins 

making the best of things in the aquarium downtown. 

One leaps over the handlebars. 

His friend, (or is it his brother? They look alike 

now that you’re paying attention) 

swerves at the last to avoid him.

They sit by the side of the road eating strings 

of candy, long, red ropes they dangle downward 

to their mouths. What hungry little birds.

Somewhere their mother waits for them 

to leave the nest, fly over hedges toward the pond, 

which has not quite frozen over. She is Queen of Maples, 

regal in her feathers, fierce and fatal in her predatory flight.

 

 

 

Winter Rain

 

Let me move on from those frozen words.

I want to free myself from the book of time.

Whatever that means, whatever plunges me 

into a sea of desire.

Waves crash onto the shore 

sending sand and shells and rock 

hurtling toward the sun. 

We are all hurtling toward the sun, all of us,

ready to be burned away. 

I read about this in a chemistry text, 

or was it a prayer inscribed on the bark 

of a wide tree that night we got lost and slept 

on feathery moss? No matter. We can do better 

if we work together as a team. That’s what the coaches say, 

but they have been gone for decades, like seaweed and the dead. 

Let me weave in wind like a flag, the final leaf stripped in winter rain.

 

 

Beaks and Wings

 

Bound to the ship’s mast, he was free.

How that song sailed around his blood, 

how lyric and melody swept 

through his nerves. 

Of course he screamed 

for the ropes to be cut, unwound, 

but he never wanted to touch those beaks and wings. 

 

 

All day his shipmates rowed,

sweat and muscle, blisters rising 

on the most callused hands. 

All day, waxy silence, 

wind and salt air, 

a new terror, monsters wailing 

like silver girls, like softness and sleep and home.

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.