Two For Travel

have been fortunate enough to travel back and forth across our great nation and a few places around the world.

When I meet new people who have traveled extensively I like to do a little thing I like to call ‘playing Marco Polo.’ I ask them where they have traveled here at home and abroad and ask them their favorite place to visit in The U.S., and in other lands.

Here are a couple of poems I wrote about one of the states here in our land that I have wandered through:

Minnesota

My map of Minnesota

Is folded and creased,

Narrow pencil lines follow

Northerly routes and roads.

Easing into St. Paul,

Sunday morning suns

Outline skyscrapers,

Trailer trucks, dirty air

And that muddy old river.

10,000 lakes are far away!

-------------------

Missouri

My geography teacher told me

It was shaped like a boot.

So was Italy as I later recalled,

Somewhere on a hot evening;

Out of gas and patience

Up near Independence.

Red-skied evening blinds.

Italy seems a far off dream.