23 We waited till afternoon and the most sun possible to penetrate the cluster of thick pines. To enter the air within it is to enter a mystery old as the end of the Pleistocene, preserved in stillness, that sowed this soft carpet of deep green creeping cedar. At 2 p.m. so little light in here, and only the chickadees, feeding their little furnaces in the cold will come foraging, in late afternoon. The deer, chased by the season, may have bedded here, but not now, except perhaps in miserable rains. It is ancient in humans, this grasp of air, pure, the scent of pure pine, the wanderings of the cedar over the ground, which we will take, only some, and teach into a circle, for back when eternity was daily. Before candles.
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This poem was previously published the book, New Poems, published by Resource Publications, 2023 (p. 30) Read more of this author's work in Llightwood. Scroll to our Search Button and insert his name and click
Steven P. Klepeis grew up in upstate New York and holds an M.A.T. from SUNY, New Paltz, NY (1982.) After working many years in Risk Management in New York and Louisiana, he followed a job to New Mexico in 2016 where he currently resides. He started writing poetry seriously in the early 1970’s and has published Brooklyn and After and Poems 1973-1987 (2021) and Eighty-One Plus One (2022.) He wrote New Poems, his third book, over 2021-22. His fourth book, El Rio, is a collection of physical and spiritual adventures while fishing and exploring various rivers, creeks and streams in the Northern, Southern and Western U.S..
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