Robert Rhodes and Steve Klepetar Experiment with Fire and Ice

Sunset with frost, Monica’s front window

After the painting by Robert Rhodes

This could be how the world began, heat and frost:

a molten land between the two, where first flesh

quickened and a giant rose in the great gap.

Then the gods brought him down, split his skull

and made the vault of sky from the upper dome.

His body became the earth, his blood the rivers

and the seas. His bones became mountains,

his crushed teeth boulders and stones and pebbles

and sand. One gray eye lit on fire and became the sun;

one stayed milky cold and was the moon.

Wolves chased them across the sky. From his hair

the gods wove trees, whole forests guarded

by ravens and owls. The maggots on his flesh

they made into us, who delve and plow, and build;

struggle and war, conquer and destroy; paint and sing

and make up stories against the coming time when

seas boil and the flaming sword burns everything to ash.

Walking on the Ice in Buchanan Park

After the painting by Robert Rhodes

Rushes and reeds by the frozen lake,

olive shadows rise like bruises

on the ice. So quiet here, cold and still

in February’s dim light. Earth sleeps

beneath our feet. We speak in hushed

voices, afraid to startle this placid winter

scene with brittle sounds. You speak

of your dreams, how your mother

came to you with hollow eyes, held out

a loaf of her bitter dark bread. “Eat this,”

she said, her voice a rustling of dead leaves

in a snowy field , “and remember the names

I brushed hard across your face.”

You woke to a flash of lightning that tore

green tears from your eyes, your mind

flaming to orange and red, the only

dazed and  unquiet thing in this ghostly calm.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominatedfor the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press.

Robert Rhodes grew up in the Mississippi River delta region of eastern Arkansas, near Memphis, TN, and now lives in Lancaster, PA. He has painted since he was 12, and for nearly 20 years was a newspaper journalist. He has published three poetry chapbooks and the 2009 nonfiction book Nightwatch: Alone on the Prairie with the Hutterites. About these recent paintings he says: "Sunset with Frost (2016) is oil on board. Walking on the Ice (2015) is acrylic on paper."