A Guy Planted Some Spruce Trees
Mark Trechock
I wanted to see the non-musical
used-to-run-cattle and read-a-lot
Tschaekowsky (that’s how he
spelled it I think, but there’s no
certainty there, Cyrillic alphabet
translated into at least fifteen variants)
so I called him on the crackling
in and out intermittent black hole
of the cell phone five or six times
and asked him can I run by
maybe talk gas flaring, and I’m down
at the old Bjelland place, and he said
sure, let’s see, I’m not the best guy
to get you from one place to another.
He stopped, and I thought I dropped
the call again, but then he said,
“OK, there’s a guy planted some
spruce trees, the wife when she
was dying with the cancer,
and she liked to look out, you know….”
Thought I dropped him, but
I could see the spruces far-off.
Mark Trechock published approximately 50 poems from 1973 to 1995, then returned to poetry in 2015. Since then he has published more than 65 poems in magazines including Raven Chronicles, New Limestone Review, Algebra of Owls, Pinyon, and Courtship of Winds. Other poems of his are waiting publication by Visitant, SBLAAM and Triggerfish.