Steve Klepetar

Florida

When a man walks from shadows
and his eye explodes and
his stretched-out hands radiate
flame, when that happens, when
his face tears a hole in the sky,
we find these sentences hard
to complete because words
are not prayers and prayers
have never been made of brick
or stone and here’s how hard it is
to be alive: one minute the ocean
lies sweetly off shore, with sunshine
and gulls flashing through blue air,
but then you’re underwater, clinging
to a broken door, struggling
to break the surface of a wave.

Steve Klepetar knows it’s the month before the month of May, and spring comes slowly up this way.