Wisconsin Romance

I know after the misty cranberry bogs
of an early Minnesota morning, driving
east at first light, Wisconsin’s waiting
for me, the way she always is after
that long drive home to always maybe
love about to be this time, a retake,
I wonder at the end of each journey.
Drawn, I stop along the highway,
not a car in sight, stoop and stir
the thick swirl covering the ice
cold red beads of fruit, grasp
a handful and press them
to my mouth, so hungry after
so many hours on the road coming
from the west, heading into the sun,
the juice running down my chin,
staining my shirt that blood color
lit in dawn light rising up again.