October 2017

Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu

A few years ago, I walked our neighbor’s dog, Cocoa, while they were on vacation. Early one morning we jogged to the park near my house, and all over the grass we saw these strange white birds, dozens of them. I had never seen such birds before. I let go the leash, and Cocoa hurled herself at the flock, which lifted off the ground in a great swoop of white wings. This past year, we had a huge Norfolk Island Pine tree just beyond our balcony, which was home to colorful little lorikeets, large magpies, and even bigger crows. All these birds managed to flutter and peck their way into some of my poems, and I offer three this month. 

Above the Circling Birds 


The park is empty except for a man
in blue shorts splashing through mud
 
and strange white birds skimming
puddles, undisturbed by the noise of dogs.
 
They say if you walk alone, an angel
could whisper to you, reward for quiet
 
contemplation. But what if she has starved
and spent a long night in someone’s
 
tangled hair? Then what kind of song
will bring you back to light? Beneath your
 
feet, a river pushes downward toward
a flaming core. Even if words were rungs
 
on a ladder you could climb, even if
the dripping trees you pass harbored
 
dryads with faces green as meadow mist
at dawn, even then your feet could find
 
no purchase on something airy and symbolic
as a sign hung in clouds above the circling birds.

 



The Language of Birds


There was a pasture beside a dark 
wood, and a small house 
half hidden in shadows of trees. 
There was a garden and a ladder 
and a coil of rope. 
The screen door locked 
with a hook 
and eye, and the rooms 
smelled of blankets and wooden 
walls. We lived there when we 
knew how to speak the language of birds. 

We could call a long way, 
and never 
lose voices in the wind.
Magpies streaked 
across the sky, white bodies 
filled with the joy of flight. 
They shared with us their hunger 
and the lightness 
of their bones. 
We sat on the cold ground,
bare arms wrapped around our knees. 

We sat on stones and told them 
stories about owls 
swooping from the night sky, 
hunting mice and voles. 
A wood thrush 
sang to us from high branches 
in the pines, wove pictures 
of the southern sea. 
Great sharks churned without cease,  
and above green water, seagulls 
shrieked their anguish to the empty sky.

 



A Million Birds


It is the shadows that burn. 
Maybe we were not meant 
to see that, maybe we peeked 
behind the veil of night, 
but we saw flames and ash. 

We trembled in that orange 
glow, and heat seared our faces, 
while our backs ached 
in the cold. What we saw, we 
saw, each with one eye open, 

a pair of wily crows shocked 
into terror on a new earth, 
beneath the bright, bulbous 
stars of a heaven strewn 
carelessly above a landscape 

scarred and riven by fire, by breath, 
by the carrion flight of a million birds. 

​© 2017 Steve Klepetar

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