“I love roads:”
–from “Roads”
by Edward Thomas

My nomad heart is, of course,
mad for travel, street-mad, made

for movement, Saami blood,
Karelian blood, indie blood,

always in the mood to unravel
like a crow, even now, writing

this damn poem where I wish
I was moving like in the movies

where the hero is here and then
there, then here, and then gone.

____
Ron Riekki’s books include And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press,) Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award,) The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book,) and U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press). Books upcoming in 2019 include Posttraumatic: A Memoir—Essays & Flash Non-Fiction on the Military, Prison, Iggy Pop, The Devil, & Writing (Four Chambers Press/Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), The Many Lives of The Evil Dead: Essays on the Cult Film Franchise (McFarland, with Jeff Sartain,) and Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press, with Andrea Scarpino.)

Artwork by Jodie Filan