El Rio

By Steven P. Klepeis

This book proffers a delightful yet provocative collection of physical and spiritual adventures while fishing and exploring various rivers, creeks, and streams in the northern, southern, and western United States. Fishing in these poems is a subsuming mind/body experience which moves easily from a pleasant awareness of recreation in the beauty of nature to the stunning moments the self extends into darkness in the act.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666781915

Steven P. Klepeis

Steven P. Klepeis (b. 11/12/50) 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 (Fulton Books, 2021,) and Eighty-One Plus One (Lincoln Writes, 2022.) He wrote New Poems, his third book over 2021-22. His fourth book, El Rio, is as yet an unpublished collection of physical and spiritual adventures while fishing and exploring various rivers, creeks and streams in the Northern, Southern and Western U.S. He is currently working on a book length lyric narrative of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and a new collection entitle simply Love.

Book preview

EL RIO

Steven P. Klepeis

EL RIO

Copyright © 2023 Steven P. Klepeis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-8189-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-8190-8

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-8191-5

version number 032020

Table of Contents

Title Page

RIVERS

EL RIO

THE RONDOUT

MOMBACCUS CREEK

THE PECOS

THE COLDWATER

THE SANTA CRUZ

RIVERS

1

In the centuries of farmers’ sons

who have gone down the hill

to the insect laden rust brown

mud banks, and white fluffs of

cottonwood seed on black

backwaters, I have been

one. In centuries of summers

and the smell of sweet corn

under the long days

of an unimaginable sun, I

have cast for and sought

the redolence