We never knew where we had landed,
a house of grass and wind. You nailed
paintings on the wall, I hid our brimming
flasks in every room. Sometimes we
whistled waltzes as sprinklers spat long
arcs of water through dry mid-Western
air. You missed the gray ocean, laughter
of sea birds. I often wondered where
the clowns had gone. We misspoke the
words for “goblet,” “horse” and “wine.”
For years our digging came to nothing,
holes and spades clashing against rock.
And then we found the cavern where
trees are born, strung with leaves of gold.
That night we folded our shirts, watched
dirt take hold and heard a rustling
in bushes down below. Losing all sense
of direction, we bent to touch sunrise
gathering power in a sea of cloudless sky.
Steve Klepetar's work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His chapbook, My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto, was recently published by Flutter Press.
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