Step stones
in a stream,
feel crystalline grains
sprinkled with pearly shells
sleeves of water lapping
as fingers polishing
the glisten of beads.
Like a grainy white wafer
plainly placed
in the stream’s lips
is a rippled sand bar
with yellow butterflies
clinging to summer’s heat.
Approach slowly
on scattered stones
or leap the season’s trickle
toward open wings
touched with white
in sun shimmering.
Here you are
as offered prayers
from this watery sand.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Mary Belardi Erickson was born in New Jersey and today lives in the countryside of Minnesota. Her work appears in various online magazines and in print, including the Aurorean, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, and Avocet: Journal of Nature Poems. Her poems appear in Silver Boomer’s From the Porch Swing €”memories of our grandparents, and Sephryrus Press’s No Fresh Cut Flowers: The Afterlife Anthology. Her e-chapbook, Back-stepping Between Two Bridges, can be read at www.victorianvioletpress.com.
Wilderness Interface Zone 
Very nice presentation, Mary, for those of us who have seen this phenomenon. It also recalls for me walking out of a house in NW Pennsylvania early one morning and seeing a tree fully ornamented with monarchs. They were waking up, some were opening, closing their wings. And of course there was the color. Just the color of monarchs’ wings can produce a strong emotional response. In me, anyway.
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This poem has a great sound when read outloud- but you know that already probably. Thanks for sharing.
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