September 2020
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@icloud.com
sfklepetar@icloud.com
Author's Note: I visit my little granddaughters, 4 and 7. We sit outside by their
fire pit, six feet apart. They want me to tell them stories. Since the older one only wants new
ones, I must wrack my brains or try to make them up. I manage three.
“You owe me another one,” she says.
“I owe you?”
“Yeah,” she says, “because I dragged the chair all the way over here and you said ok.”
Her dad’s a lawyer and she’s pretty good at negotiating. I give her the short version of The Devil and Daniel Webster.
“That happened in Massachusetts? Pretty cool,” she says.
“I owe you?”
“Yeah,” she says, “because I dragged the chair all the way over here and you said ok.”
Her dad’s a lawyer and she’s pretty good at negotiating. I give her the short version of The Devil and Daniel Webster.
“That happened in Massachusetts? Pretty cool,” she says.
Forgiving Hands
The day she felt dizzy, that warm day
in July, her eyes unable to focus, we
tried to get her to go to the hospital
but it was the plague year and besides,
she said, all I need is to lie down.
We looked in on her, not all at once,
of course, but sort of in shifts, though
we weren’t all that organized, and anyway
we sat around drinking the last of the wine
we had ordered by the case because
it was so cheap and good.
And then we were dizzy and someone
said we should all go to the hospital,
but no one was near sober enough to drive.
We went to lie down and when we woke up,
every one of us was still alive.
Or so we thought, and she was cooking
pasta in the big blue pot and sauce
was bubbling away. We might have
turned into sparrows, like in the folk song,
or crows, watching from the oaks outside.
But really, we felt ashamed, so we waited
until night to crawl away from her forgiving hands.
Unaccustomed Light
When plague came, the city was deserted.
No carts rattling down cobbled streets,
no mothers hanging wash in the summer sun.
There were no games, no dances, shops
were closed, everybody huddled indoors,
so when the girl slipped out, all she saw
was a coyote trotting along in her back yard.
She was afraid, as you might have been,
because it was large and lithe, with knowing
eyes that burned. But she was brave, and so
tired of her cramped little house and her sisters
whining about dull food, and the same books
and songs. She crept to the tawny beast,
who of course changed shape and became
a handsome prince, or maybe just a salesman
with a new approach. Hard to tell as she stood
there blinking in unaccustomed light. And then
she was on all fours with him, running toward
the pond, neighbors leaning out their windows
at the sound of howling in the quiet afternoon.
©2020 Steve Klepetar
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