Mark Trechock writes from the Great Plains, southwestern North Dakota. He published his first poem in 1974 and took a 20-year hiatus from publishing, starting in 1995. He retired from a career in church and community organizing work and is writing again. Recent publications include Jonah Magazine, Southern Pacific Review, Triggerfish, the Ekphrastic Review, Radius, Kudzu House, Shark Reef, High Desert Journal, Passager, Kestrel, Snowy Egret and Weber: The Contemporary West.

Overture

I walked in Kenny Fjelde’s footsteps at midnight,
the streets like an auditorium two hours before the concert,
a percussion section of dark houses set up but silent,
everything taut with latent pounding,
the meter yet to be determined,
no theme but the monotone humming
from the electric lines poised overhead,
no tuning of instruments except a car door closing
blocks away in an uncertain direction.

A lifetime could pass here without any lyrics,
loves widely lost and hearts routinely broken,
fortunes unsought and evil unpunished,
yet no record of anguish but cottonwood leaves
whispering undistinguished like voices off-stage
suggesting great emotion of an undetermined nature.

[Meteor, Milky Way and Cottonwoods | Randy Halverson]