8 June 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 2
Burning trestle, a refuge for prayer and grieving
– for Lee Harmon
As under an interrogator's light
or haze of heat lamp,
the homestead is shrouded by late summer. The lake
on one side, the marsh and its forest on another.
A patrolman approaches. I pull a seam of sod underneath
the picnic table and hide the stash I was given. All of the milled
wood is rotten. The boardwalk is dark and spongy. Planks
relaxed like addicts in reverie; pilings
sinking in the slough. Handrail pocked with fingerprints,
fossils left by others who've stood, pushing, as I do,
to stretch my calves, looking past cattails
and the depressions of water, to the spit of firs that wanes
into the empty bay.
I fall like a train—white smoke stiffens, lengthens
my beard—and land to my wrists
in mud, a mound of marsh grass, the flaccid
swords of wild calamus.
About the author:
Todd Fredson's poems have appeared in Poetry International, Blackbird, Court Green, Gulf Coast, Pistola, Puerto del Sol, RUNES, Slush Pile, and other journals. He is the director of programming at the McReavy House Museum of Hood Canal in Union, WA. He lives in the Skokomish Valley, with his wife, Sarah Vap, and their two sons.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Todd Fredson at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 7, No. 2, where "Burning trestle, a refuge for prayer and grieving" ran on June 8, 2007. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
