She drifted north, they say, across the azure sea.
They say she built a raft of skulls bound with twine.

She twisted rope from tough plants she whispered to
as night gathered its blanket of stars. She sailed

on moonbeams glassy as ice. Her tail twitched
in the wind as she scented her prey in warm wind.

Even then, on a journey through folds of time, she
knew she was blessed, knew the pass she had to guard.

I saw her once, on her cliff-top perch, from a long distance,
beautiful and serene with her teeth and claws and her bag of souls.

[Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Flutter Press has recently published two chapbooks: My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word and My Father Had Another Eye.]