Night Sounds / Around Midnight by Steve Klepetar

Night Sounds

Here you found a map colored 

with six shades, a legend 

bidding you to mind your step

on the way down. 

And here is a gray door streaked with rain. 

Only now, when sunlight 

fades, can you feel the grit 

in your eye. It’s true 

you’ve hiked a long day, and your belly growls. 

Now the night sounds begin. 

Standing in the wind may drive you 

off course, send you out through tangles 

and swamp. Still, you remain ready 

for what comes next, the whisper 

of wings or songs of starlight filtered through leaves.

Around Midnight

I came out into the field.

The houses burned with light.

I might have been dreaming, 

I might have fallen a long way 

through a hole in the sky. 

No wonder leaves drifted 

around my body 

and danced in the autumn breeze. 

After a long absence, I had come home. 

The blue door opened 

and the inmates carried me away. 

In the dining room, plates 

and cups and wine. 

We feasted on fruits of the earth, 

we carried a thousand flavors 

wrapped around our tongues.

There were turnips 

and parsnips and butter and salt, 

carrots still rough with garden dirt. 

Garlic, and peppers and so many 

onions frying in the pan.

Our eyes rained tears.  

Even the walls were merry then, 

and the floorboards rattled with mirth.

We tripped upstairs into soft beds. 

Half asleep, we lay there tasting darkness 

and the silver silence of our heated breath.

Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps), and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).