Photo by dcwcreations / shutterstock

Ice Age Trail: Cedar Lake Segment, August

Alongside the traffic-hum,
two fawns eat from the farmhouse garden,
with its budding six-tree apple orchard.

The smaller one with brighter
spots steps forward, wondering—
what other tamed wild thing lingers

on wide-shoulder gravel? I walk
five miles to enter the woods
at Polk Kames, moraine-peaks grounded

in tall, old-oaks and thick maples.
Today they are lush, with full ponds
and hungry, swathing me in relentless mosquito-hum.

I hurry to find
road edge again where the breeze
frees the itch from my skin.

Trading one hum for another,
I cannot decide
which I like better.

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. Her poetry has been featured in Bramble, Moss Piglet, The Little Book Project, the Muse 5, ArtAsPoetryAsArt, and Portage Magazine.