National Poetry Month: Issue 8

For Friday's NPM entry, I'm featuring another poem I wrote that was accepted for publishing a while back by Verse Wisconsin. It was inspired while I was in Minnesota over the Christmas holiday a few years ago. While I was out walking I came across an outdoor hockey rink. It dredged up memories of my youth where there was almost a hockey rink in every park. Midwest winters are a bear, but believe me when I tell you that I moved here in part to get a milder dose. So far, so good. The poem is about how winter is part of the culture up there and how one trip over a holiday brought back a ton of childhood memories.


Of Ice And Minn*                                          by Jim Landwehr

A mythical governor once declared
“A hockey rink in every park,
skating ovals on every lake.”
            Skates are standard issue

Snowbanks glaciate into icefalls
Bus stop sherpas navigate
With cramp-ons and ropes
            Baby Hillary steps

Local lore tells of black ice
Auto-exhaustion
Hidden from sight
            Motorist killer

Tented angler sentinels
Fish from bucket seats
On desolate ice
            Eelpout and chips

Skiers drive the fifth tee
Down the fairway hill
Into the rough
            Winter’s mulligan

Castles of ice
Carnivals of cold
People of warmth

            This is Minnesota



*Previously published in Verse Wisconsin Magazine

Biography:

Jim Landwehr enjoys writing creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. His first book, Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir will be released by eLectio Publishing on June 17th, 2014. He has non-fiction stories published in Boundary Waters Journal, Forge Journal and MidWest Outdoors Magazine. His poetry has been featured in Verse Wisconsin, Torrid Literature Journal, Echoes Poetry Journal, Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine, the Wisconsin Poets Calendar, Off the Coast Poetry Journal, Heavy Bear online magazine and others. He also has a fiction story published on the Free Zombie Fiction Blog. Jim lives and works in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

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