Poetry by TC Pescatore

      ​Rich Carstensen CC




bodhisattva of the trails 

a service road past the ridge
snow steady falling
intermittent hail and sleet
the sky same color as the ground
but for the slash of brown gravel underneath our feet

        packing down the stone in its path
the car color of sky and ground as it rolled by
and to a stop

                           tossing our wet bags into the back
our wet bodies into the body of the car
cutting 2 miles off our tramp and unload
at the cross where we painted black tags on
blue paint dynamite shed
2.4 miles down to 414 the road

he was hiking in to check out some mines
we were hiking out after a long night and day of snow
we waved through the window good bye
turned in the raining hail toward our task
he drifted like a ghost into the past





sheltered 

rucksack wrapped in
navy blue poncho
bought outside Seattle
traveled 4,000-odd miles
ripped and stretched
and tied
rain coming down
cold cold morning rain,

in mists of mountain air
we said good bye and turned away,

north south

you sank back into forest
around trail turn

rain picked up
and clouds

You'll be in Pennsylvania
tomorrow

I say into nothing 

"I'll see you in a thousand miles”





dirty kids

the most famous dogs in america
walk on sidewalks like blind angelina jolies
ogling all the camera laden cars
riding by with an eye to document their 
day
to day walks on the small stages of green
the government provides beside its myriad of
gray traveled railways

these are the rabid transparent hounds
cardboard for mouths and feed
that frighten the curly white haired famous dogs
bred with floppy ears and small bladders
that are unaware of the red leashes
bound around their necks





Bald Eagle Island Camp

how foot sinks in riverbed

how the fire is a city of embers before the night

how the organized howl of train lit by lonely
stars
& search light rushes lament through the tunnel
of the writhing darkness
too fast to catch 

how waking in dream the sleeper
on the siding
huddled in tent huddled & dwarfed
by trees huddled & inert in the
hours & miles lost to the day is
swallowed by the vast & dreaming forest




TC Pescatore, an itinerant punk & former hobo, has scratched out poems high in the mountains of the North Cascades, on California's rocky coast and under pink desert skies over the Rio Grande, he might have left a few behind to mark his trail. He has published collections of poetry including This Oil-Puddle World (2024) & a novella, the Boxcar Bop! (2018).
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