Travelling Home on Highway 67
A gray line penciled the hills
in front of the front,
not a New York hop-on, hop-off,
but a typewriter ribbon of road
in Wisconsin
from Ashippun
to Old Ashippun
and on to Iron Ridge.
Aluminum-blued clouds
saved droplets of rain til Mayville.
Newly sheared ewes,
knee high in marsh-wet cows,
sweet air of rain-scented honeysuckle,
distressed paint on abandoned houses,
edge-rotten, one hinge wood doors,
pastures of clover, white blossomed,
disturbed tenderly by fawn hooves
and tiny teeth,
the grey line penciled the hills
northward.
Marilyn Zelke-Windau is a Wisconsin poet and a former elementary school art teacher. Her poems have appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Stoneboat, Fox Cry Review, Your Daily Poem, Midwest Prairie Review and several anthologies. Her Adventures in Paradise (Finishing Line Press) and Momentary Ordinary (Pebblebrook Press) were published in 2014.
Portage Magazine 