3. Pelican Rapids, Minnesota to Gladstone, Michigan
There is a land set halfway home,
the sculpture of sunlight and storm,
a rolling canvas molded from prairies
and painted with pastures, copses, and corn.
There’s a Psalm of abundance sung
by the earth in the voice of wind and rain
as summer daylight … wanes.
-
The vale is a place of parting,
where road companions peel away
true to their own imperative. I steer
my bike the northern way, straight
into angst of daily toils, beset
by head winds, heat, and storms.
My roads climb unending swells
closed in by corn row monotony.
Plagues of black flies rise from bogs
and evening mosquitos sequester my tent.
My spirit is mired in the daily must
as midnight morphs into dawn.
-
But surely the wind will shift again,
the hills will flatten, skies shall blue,
and I will sit by still waters. There is rest
on the shores of Big Sand Lake, renewal
birthed in a kindness. This is the quiet
of my trip, when adventure becomes
ordinary and pleasure is taken in maps
and meals, in quenching sips and soaking
baths, in rotating pedals and finding my
pace, easing across the countryside.
-
There is a land set halfway home,
a gentle land — I shall return …
another day. But now is the time to be
gone. To encounter the empty timberland
as I enter the East outside Escanaba
and camp by the bay of a sweet water sea.
next: The Great Lakes
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