No one in town seems to know
their way around these county roads
that have only numbers for names,
and about all the farmers
can say for sure is how much
tonnage each local bridge can take.
This terrain so full of hills
and tricks where, as trees grow
thicker, roads grow thinner.
Roads that run like local
rivers that turn and quick-
change their minds. Roads
so convoluted that it might
just take an hour or more
to travel the twenty miles
to the next county line.
But how often has it been
that I have asked the way
out of here and was told
You can’t miss it only
to find later how badly I do?
Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio now residing in California. His poems and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States (including The Broadkill Review), and internationally in The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia. Two of his poems recently appeared in Realms of the Mothers: The First Decade of Dos Madres Press. His latest book of poems, A Grammar for Snow, has recently been published by Unsolicited Press.