Steve Klepetar: "Barefoot"

How shall I walk?
                               Barefoot?
The sharp stones, the dirt. I would
hobble.
                        -Denise Levertov

Or should I walk the air
rising to the tree line
with a step invisible and light
beyond the power of pain?

My father lost his shoes once,
left them on a train churning
toward a city in the mist.
By the time he reached our
garden, his feet were shredded,

he limped with footprints
of blood. I watched him
cover his feet with rags, head
bent to his ankles, as if
to hide his misery and shame.

Even then his voice, tuneless
and deep, rose from the stream
bed of his chest, ash fountains  
propelled by geysers and flood.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared in nine countries, in such journals as Antiphon, 
Boston Literary Magazine, Chiron, Deep Water, Expound, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Ygdrasil,
and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and
Best of the Net, including four in 2016. The most recent of his eleven collections include
My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems. Family Reunion, and A Landscape
in Hell are forthcoming in 2017.