Mary Belardi Erickson – Wilderness Interface Zone

Let Rocks Speak by Mary Belardi Erickson

After €œApril is the cruelest month, € T.S. Eliot

Earth surrounds you, my rough-orange Chessie.
Earth retrieved you through its door.
Raccoons quarrel in the yard without your night patrol.
Covered with daisy rugs and a new red collar on,
your head rests on a corduroy purple pillow.
You are held deeply like a queen’s companion
in cool repose.

Forgetting, I think you waiting in cool May grass.
I see your shining eyes–expectantly bright.
That morning I closed them.
They had watched for me one last time.
By excavating, we had you laid six feet deep
where summer heat will bother you no more.
At first, I kept watered there marigolds and zinnias.
We planted orange tulips and peony bushes
to watch for each spring.

I picked from the field white, Continue reading “Let Rocks Speak by Mary Belardi Erickson”

Late Spring Ringmaster by Mary Belardi Erickson

A lone pelican lands on the slough
beside the barn–
a gawkish bird gliding
onto the murky water,
a flap and beating of wings–
then, a hump of white feathers suspended,
the long orange bill tucked
against his chest.

Pelicans usually stay in large groups
like a carnival of white and orange,
a noisy bunch on parade
content with no less than a feast.
Their feats can marvel, indeed:
gulping and swallowing fish whole,
squawking and swooping to fill pouches.
Young mouths drop open
in hungry wonder.

Many minutes pass
while the moment remains
on the still water
where algae spread
and reeds grow thickly
concealing a thousand watching eyes.
The motionless pelican floats–
posing, as if waiting
to be painted.

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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. To read more of Mary’s poetry at WIZ click here and here.

€œLate Spring Ringmaster € was previously published in Avocet: Journal of Nature Poems.

*contest entry*

Gleaning the Field by Mary Belardi Erickson

Snowflakes crisp the air.
From behind me, an afternoon plate
of sun brightens the furrows
made by the plow,
revealing yellow cobs
lost by the harvester.

As I walk the hardened rise and fall in the field,
I glide my boots from row-top to top.
Like The Little Prince who perched atop a small planet,
I can discover every high dirt bump is a world.

Soon, I float from furrow to furrow.
In this clarified breeze of movement,
I then pause to rotate and scan
the aura of a horizon’s further fields–
the tree lines, waterways and marsh grass.

Now to the field’s edge, I find myself continuing,
my sack filled with the hidden corn
from dirt clumps gleaned.
The chickens will feast tonight.

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For Mary’s bio and another of her poems on WIZ, click here.

Step Stones by Mary Belardi Erickson

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.

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