John Zedolik writes

Private Service 



Anyone could be back here
on the dubious trail beside
the tracks and under the blind 


grip of clasping branches
that yield a private cathedral
of considerable length to any


worshipping in these bottom
lands in their own schismatic
way, river and rail gods girding 


the trace, but, one hopes, not
answering shady prayers for plunder,
pain to travelers, or blood, a stray-lamb 


sacrifice to private demons sans merci
in this tenebrous track leading
to scarred concrete and links 


barring entrance to the mill’s hulking
bones where hellish fires once
threatened without respite even 


the hardened worker, now dead,
or safer than the one on the mud-ruts
and crab grass during a Sunday morning 


under discarded leaves and shadows,
accompanied by only industry’s ghosts,
benign, unlike some current walkers, 


encased in calloused flesh, waiting with steel.