Preacher's Camp
Beltsville Dam, Pennsylvania

A hundred feet up the fire road,
I can still hear the knock of a bass boat
drifting on the lake. Minutes later,
sunlight in rhythm stripes oak trunks

a half mile deep into the woods
as a wake rocks ashore, thumping and leaching
topsoil clenched in roots of yellow birch.
The camp is under the reservoir; a road

planes out of the water. A hurt runs on
in the mind in made up conversations:
The structures submerged and unseen,
the shores we walk down to.

Something no longer there continues in something
hidden: lake light swings through the dark beneath pines.
The shock of a doe's hooves striking rock
runs straight through the ground and rattles a heart.

Copyright © 2004 David Staudt All rights reserved
from Fresh Water: Poems From the Rivers, Lakes, and Streams
Pudding House Publications
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission