Steve Klepetar - Shadow Play

“If you can’t be free, be a mystery.”

                Rita Dove

My father walked in a swirl of cloud,
eyes folded into dark screens where
the dead passed, an endless shadow play.

His feet never touched the ground.
I saw him smile, but the face beneath
the face drew skin tight over the ball

of his skull, high forehead and green
eyes sprinkled with the memory
of trains. He was deaf to the sound

of cars. Sometimes his fingers folded
into claws. I saw him leap from
the windowsill in the form of a cat,

land lightly on the ground, his long tail
holding balance as he streaked, gray-
striped mystery lost among naked trees.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and 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 (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press).