On the River of Noise by Steve Klepetar

Once there was a house that floated

on a river of noise

that tossed on waves of words, shook in the rain

and wind of a thousand names,

a house no more substantial than mist or glass.

A woman lived there with her name

and her glass of wine

and the string around her finger reminded her

of voices bubbling on the stove,

of fragments she assembled from frost and dew.

Sometimes she spoke to the ghosts of cats

or even to revenant owls.

She told stores that were true once, in mountain

camps where thunder held the scent

of yarrow and larkspur, monkshood and columbine.

I knew her name, and it was smoke,

it was breath and bells

and many crystal sounds of frozen air

fractured in the far north. It was spring storm

and rivers rising, the greening flood plain swept away.

Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press.