It comes without ceremony,
a small engine of dusk
stitched from velvet and ash,
wings whispering the language
of doors. On its back, a pale
suggestion, mask or skull,
as if something beneath
remembers how to be seen.
You lift the window
but it has already entered,
carrying the night in fragments.
It circles the lamp.
What does it want of you,
this careful emissary,
soft-bodied omen
with its borrowed face?
Only to be witnessed
in a brief arithmetic of breath
before the dark closes its ledger.
And still it lingers,
as if waiting for a name
to fall from your mouth
like a faint and final light.
Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad and have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
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