Steve Klepetar - Dynasties of the Dead / Keeper of the Flame

Dynasties of the Dead

“Everywhere plants

Flourish among graves.

Sinking their roots

In all the dynasties

Of the dead.”

                Seamus Heaney

The dead gather

in April chill.

Their kings chatter

beneath Black Maple

as ranks gather by Ground Plum

and Pussytoes.

By now the earth

is soft and wet

and filled with worms.

The dead have eyes made of rain,

they have fingers

formed of mud and twigs.

Some kneel by  Kittentails

or run bruised palms

over white-leaved Rock Cress

or Bittercress

or parasitic Mistletoe.

Sleet whispers through

the trees, falls

silently on Leatherleaf

and purple

Jeweled Shooting Star.

How sweet, this gathering

of clans, all the dynasties

of the dead, as wildflowers flourishing

among graves call them home to the cold north.

Keeper of the Flame

Today she keeps the flame, it’s her

responsibility, her gift. The men

set out on snowshoes, thudding

through birch and pine toward

Gracie’s lake, where many years ago

a woman from a cabin on the hill

drowned herself and left her name,

a curse, then later just a place where

chickadees sing and the north wind

tosses late winter snow. She’s

swept the hearth, baked a dozen

loaves. Stew bubbles in a kettle on

the stove. Her eyes feel red and sore.

She has followed through the cold on

her cape of wind. She stares into the fire

where goblins wait, green-blue faces,

black eyes peering through orange heat,

laughing in the crackle of logs and sparks and smoke.






Steve Klepetar’s work received three nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net in 2014.  Recent collections include: Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications), Blue Season (with Joseph Lisowski, mgv2>publishing), My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, (Kind of a Hurricane Press).