Ice Age Trail: West Bend Segment
I’ve left Friendly Drive,
the car parked by the Elevator.
My feet seek steps of solitude
and organic green life.
Traffic sound follows me, buzzing
through Kettle Moraine tree rocky ups
and downs like simmering anxious
thoughts. The noise, the humanness
I can’t escape. Looking for beauty
I see brown, twisted broken trunks
their struggle to climb ended.
Trail moves from thinning trees to town
walking to Culvers, hope of wildness
dissolves like lemon ice down
my throat, but reemerges
in the park as city sounds
dissipate in unbroken brown water
around the feet of the Ridge Run hills
where the path shifts, a result
of collective rerouting
around a wind-weeded branch
returned to feed the forest floor.
My thoughts settle on white ruffles
over brown decay – the fungi-coated limb
holding beginnings and
endings intermingled
gently forcing
this new path.
Katrina Serwe
Katrina Serwe, BS, MS, PhD … it took her three degrees to figure out she’s really a poet. Now she’s on Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail writing poems and sharing hiking haiku on Instagram. Her poems have been published in Bramble, Moss Piglet, The Little Book Project, Muse 5, and the Solitary Plover.
Portage Magazine 