In the Place Where We Are Always Alone by Steve Klepetar

Winter window (midnight): In the place where we are always alone, by Robert Rhodes, 2015.

In the Place Where We Are Always Alone
 
We stare out the window into winter’s
blood, where the river’s surface smokes
with cloud and snow. It runs through
us all, secretly foaming downhill from
forest to sea. Every day it churns
and boils, tearing the tenuous banks,
crushing white rock into sand.
Here we are always alone, cast back
on ourselves, wanderers dismissed
from a gleaming hall.
Even in our loneliness, we sometimes
see into its streaming heart, our eyes
turned inward, ears attuned to currents
and the quick movements of fish.
Turtles crawl slowly through frozen
rushes and fibrous reeds. Midnight now,
and the sky burns violet, another river
to hold us in this silent place.
Its music can only be the song of detritus
and farewell. How it runs from us,
as if daylight would drain from our veins
and darkness disgorge us into ice and wind and storm.

Steve Klepetar

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others.  Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). 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). His new chapbook, The Li Bo Poems, is forthcoming from Flutter Press.