Buying a Map in Wisconsin
I’ve yet to walk these cornstalks
or under a blue sky to stroll
one of these country roads.
Roads, which like blown seeds, skip
from field to field, and must lead somehow
to a house and story.
For to me, these roads are only safe for driving,
a place where I look through my window to watch
oars of cornhusks rowing across a plain.
Though the more I drive, the more I know
someone like me does not come out so far
to get lost or let go. I have family here
in a small house in Patch Grove, Wisconsin.
And when I was a child, I remember burying
my grandmother there, where amidst the tears
of that morning, I marveled how butterflies
combed her tombstone with a spiritual air,
how my fingers changed states
tracing her name on a cut of marble rock.