There’s a yellow boat on a blue sea.
It’s a drawing you made, and the sun

is like an olive in the sky.
Maybe you were thinking Martini

thoughts, or maybe you were drawn
to that horizon which always seemed

to mark your work, that blurry line
of spray and cloud where the world

disappeared. Some artists render light
as if it were something you could touch

or breathe, but you always drew
and painted taste, a world made of lemons

and salt. Your objects melt and fade,
like something sweet on the tongue.

What lasts cannot be trees,
their trunks and leaves, but a flavor

caught for an instant, a sensation
in the act of fading into itself.

Your landscapes hang on my walls,
and every meadow, every sea cliff,

each green field, lingers in my mouth,
the sound of taste, another lovely, long farewell.

—
Steve Klepetar has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent 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.