Rescue

BY BETH PETERSON

It begins with a loud crack,

John and I, out on the river

fighting like we’re married

twelve fourteen-year-old boys

and their youth pastor

whose topic this week is suffering

set up tents, pace the campsite

lie on their backs

on a nice wide pitch of grass

What was that? I ask John

He looks up, but says nothing

It’s relentless, the sound in the background

of the space we cannot fill, or won’t

It’s a sound like something dropped or pulled

a forgotten dog on a half-chewed leash

biting at the bit

A million tiny thunderclaps 

stacking themselves like stones

in a distant cerulean blue 

I’m telling John that maybe 

we should move things along

call the boys in, get a fire started

make conservative preparations for the possibility of rain 

when suddenly we both see it

a 50-foot box elder, right at the edge of the forest

long ridges, thin leaves, interlacing furrows, 

tipped to its side 

holding precariously 

After this, it all happens at once: 

the box elder crashing towards the tents

me jumping back 

and John, John is bolting

right towards that falling tree, 

back muscles tensed 

arms outstretched

as if, all along, he’d been waiting 

to catch whatever was coming

---

Beth Peterson is the author of Dispatches from the End of Ice. A wilderness guide before she began writing, Beth’s essays and poems appear in The Pinch, Fourth Genre, Terrain.org, and other publications. Beth lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she is an associate professor at Grand Valley State University.

Process Note: As I write, I try to follow my curiosities, my repeated memories, my habitually unanswered questions. The moments I describe in this poem are ones I think of often: a sure sign that they meant something in the narrative of my life. Poetry is a way for me to find out what that something might be.