Winter Night by Steve Klepetar

Winter Night, by Robert Rhodes. Contemporary.

Winter Night: Reading to Margaret Until She Falls Asleep
 
Margaret sleeps in the heat of her red dreams.
Above her, winter sky:  bands of cold black,
deep as wells beneath an iron land, and blue-
green smears of starlight on the crusted snow.
Wind subsides and trees rustle, then regain
their dignity in this icy calm. An owl swoops
above the tree line, wings extended toward
streetlights, where shadows stretch in ghostly
gray. Margaret breathes the gentle rhythm
 of her rest, dreams herself into the rich voice
of her father’s tale. Hand over hand she climbs
a rainbow ladder through inky chill, until
 the lights of her town shrink to pinpoints far
below, and her hair glows with a bright new flame

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.