October Mountain / Heron by Steve Klepetar

October Mountain

A night drive over October Mountain, winding down to Beckett 

through dark pines, maple and oak. 

Turkeys along the road, and breaking the silence, 

coyotes barking at the moon. 

At the general store we buy cider doughnuts, 

strong coffee, and for later, a six pack of beer. 

We live in a land of plenty, a blind land. 

All night, as we drive, the radio talks of flood waters rising, 

of desperation and angry voices raised. 

Someone has walked out in the middle of an interview, 

and a drummer from a once famous band has died. 

The football scores are in and there will be an election soon. 

Summer has ended and in the wind that sweeps across the hills

we catch a new scent in the air, something like apples and leaves 

and smoke from beyond the river, where stars glisten like crystals of ice.

Heron

There’s a change in sensation, a numbness around the eye. 

Day folds inward with its clouds and rain. 

Beyond the lawn, where the wild world starts, 

a blue heron leaps into the air. 

Suddenly the sky is filled with its wings, its form, 

and then it’s gone with nothing left but wet grass and a brightening.

We sit stunned by this gift, wordless 

in the face of something we can’t name, a glory that passes, 

felt in the spine, in the blood, in trees bending, gray-green in the wind.

Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).