WASHINGTON AVENUE BRIDGE,

JANUARY 7th

              after John Berryman

Gray & half-frozen & one

             hundred feet beneath,

the fine stones

& sturdy waters are my sudden

comeuppance.  I find them & thyself

              altogether willing.

Ask me

what I was with strong

women, bottles & rivers—my last three

seconds      flashing      along at the larger

               thereafter; its chilly blue

               friendly—

this present decline.  Days

so empty, or     too full.     A reckoning

(shatter)     does arrive.  Receive me,

O trees, to your wint’ring

tit—these bad thoughts & wooly

               socks; this crust of toast & twisty

spot of reddest wine.

Todd Pederson is a student in the MFA program at Hamline University who has twice been named a finalist in The Loft’s Mentorship Series for poetry. His recent works have appeared on mnartists.org, in What Light, an anthology, and in The Rake: 10,000 Arts. Todd works as a technical writer for a biomedical research corporation in Chaska, Minnesota, and lives in Eden Prairie with his wife and two children.