Sunrise in a Cloudless Sky by Steve Klepetar

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.