Poetry By Steve Klepetar

Giles Dring Flickr CC


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Blood and Bone

You spring from puddles left by snow.
I look away, and you leap into life, 
your black hair flying, and your mouth 
open like a rose in the sun. 
There you are, racing across the yard, 
your little legs gobbling up the ground. 
Sometimes you scream inchoate sounds – 
terror, frustration, joy – 
sometimes you taste a thousand words 
as they roll from your lips. 
Fully armored, you leapt from my brain, 
from my loins, from the split bark of oaks. 
You rise from underground, you descend 
from a ship made of clouds. Your smile 
is a gash on the wall, a plume of flame 
curving across the sky. 
I have loved you forever, waiting with hands 
open and eyes turned inward toward blood and bone. 




Beside the River

We will stay home tonight, beside the river 
and the frogs. We will wait for the moon, 
which rises full and pale as ice. 
Together we will walk out onto the deck 
and lean against the rails.
The only thing that saddens us 
is that we can’t stay like this forever, 
in this good house among the hills.
Again we hear voices in the trees, 
calling from a long way off.
You speak about the sky as I listen 
to your words filling the space between us. 
You speak of heat and rain and the coming fall, 
which we can almost taste on the river’s skin.

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Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad, and has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include Why Glass Shatters and The Coffee Drinker’s Son.

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