March 2019
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu
NOTE: I am very lucky to be living in the Berkshires, near my sons and daughters-in-law, and granddaughters, and luckier still to have a comfortable home in a beautiful place. I see mountains out my back windows, and beyond the grassy yard, a pond and pines and laurel and birch. I often drive to my younger son’s house in Beckett, over the Washington Mountain Road, which is lovely in all seasons, if a bit harrowing on snowy days. I’ve been interested to see how this new locality has found its way into my work, and how that beauty contrasts with the ghosts of the past and the daily horrors of the news.
Halfway Through the Month
and spring seems far off as ever
with snow tumbling around
the mountains and the trees.
Night has fallen, and you have
returned through the yard,
your face pressed cold against
window glass.
In the streetlight you look
so pale and old, shrunk
to a child’s body, and then,
when I look again, no body at all.
The bush outside my door shimmers,
and is still. Darkness thickens
around our house.
The radio says it will snow all night,
with wind piling drifts around mailbox poles.
But now you have slipped away into the shadows
of trees, or into webs, or maybe this time into the heart of storm.
Middle of the night
again, and I’m awake
watching you sleep,
worrying about
my eye,
our democracy,
fires and rising seas.
Outside, cold
and silent, dark
since late afternoon,
the moon and stars
obscured by clouds.
A streetlamp, some
porch lights on
neighboring houses.
Every so often
the furnace hums.
I wish I could rise
from these sheets
like fog
over the mountain,
spread myself
across the yard
to where the pond
lies, hidden
behind dying reeds.
In the Distance
Sound of wind and rain sweeping over hills.
Warm for January, snow melting from roof
and deck. Behind the house, pond swells
as banks disappear. Somewhere in another life,
we swam out past the breakers.
Rain pocked the water as we drove through the sea.
All day we swam, and then we rested
in one another’s arms. Wind howled us to sleep.
In the morning, the bay was dark with rain.
We drank strong coffee, munched raisin toast
as the radio played the news, a plane crash in a country
far away, an earthquake on an island in a distant sea.
You climbed in my lap and we sat for a long time,
breathing in that broken day. In the distance, cars
on the main road, dogs barking at the mournful trees.
Halfway Through the Month
and spring seems far off as ever
with snow tumbling around
the mountains and the trees.
Night has fallen, and you have
returned through the yard,
your face pressed cold against
window glass.
In the streetlight you look
so pale and old, shrunk
to a child’s body, and then,
when I look again, no body at all.
The bush outside my door shimmers,
and is still. Darkness thickens
around our house.
The radio says it will snow all night,
with wind piling drifts around mailbox poles.
But now you have slipped away into the shadows
of trees, or into webs, or maybe this time into the heart of storm.
Middle of the night
again, and I’m awake
watching you sleep,
worrying about
my eye,
our democracy,
fires and rising seas.
Outside, cold
and silent, dark
since late afternoon,
the moon and stars
obscured by clouds.
A streetlamp, some
porch lights on
neighboring houses.
Every so often
the furnace hums.
I wish I could rise
from these sheets
like fog
over the mountain,
spread myself
across the yard
to where the pond
lies, hidden
behind dying reeds.
In the Distance
Sound of wind and rain sweeping over hills.
Warm for January, snow melting from roof
and deck. Behind the house, pond swells
as banks disappear. Somewhere in another life,
we swam out past the breakers.
Rain pocked the water as we drove through the sea.
All day we swam, and then we rested
in one another’s arms. Wind howled us to sleep.
In the morning, the bay was dark with rain.
We drank strong coffee, munched raisin toast
as the radio played the news, a plane crash in a country
far away, an earthquake on an island in a distant sea.
You climbed in my lap and we sat for a long time,
breathing in that broken day. In the distance, cars
on the main road, dogs barking at the mournful trees.
© 2019 Steve Klepetar
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