Mary Belardi Erickson

Hello...

...from the prairies of western Minnesota. This is a new web site to help my readers
find my poems through links to various web magazines and also references to print journals
such as The Aurorean, Waterways, and Avocet.

Tactile Identity

I learned and taught with chalk--
squiggles, doodled tales
or carefully etched lines,
sometimes cycles of planets
or notes on asteroids looming,
certainly lines of ordinary living.

I’m glad for chalk, its smell and feel,
still further for forgiving water, cleansing
mistakes marked with chalky fingers--
not digitized for posterity.

Now, blackboards are progressed
to whiteboards
linked with computers.

And I celebrate myself
online, communicating
in bits the common grass,
in megabytes the celestial.

On sidewalks, children still
draw colorful creations--
as momentary as a treasure of rain
or my fingers tapping keys.

by Mary Belardi Erickson, previously published by Victorian Violet Press

EXCITING NEWS: While You Blue-step is published.

May 19, 2012: While You Blue-step is a selection of 26 poems previously accepted by multiple editors and published in various international journals. Now as a collection, I've arranged the poems to invite further thought, to spark the imagination. See Amazon.com for further description. If you are a library or bookstore or other interested poetry readers, please contact me for a book-signing and reading.

You can also purchase books directly from me as soon as they very soon arrive. They are that hot off the press!!