This evening at suppertime she peers into the beef and carrots simmering on the right burner; I snip pea pods and spinach into the black bean broth on the left burner. Pretty soon both pots are smelling darn good. It’s usually something like this, the scene in our kitchen all the years since I decided to stop eating meat and she didn’t. Separate skillets, or sequential nuking, then sit down together.
But then every once in a while it’s all her show. She steams the broccoli while I sit near the lamp and read. I start on a little dry white wine (she’ll accept two ounces for herself later – Pastor Jan, pretend you didn’t read this) while she simmers the pasta. She serves two blue patterned Japanese bowls we’ve owned since year one. Then we sit down together.
When I die, sorry to say, I have no faith that there will be an angel in heaven who can make broccoli Alfredo this good.
. . . . . . .
Getting home from the office early these days, I’m revisiting the overflowing stacks beside my desk. Poetry, philosophy, poetry, nature, poetry — I’ve rediscovered that all of Terri Kirby Erickson’s poems are home.
Lots of poetry is about home – you get a peak through the curtains and maybe you can imagine life on the other side of the pane. Terri’s poems are home. Welcome in. Don’t mind the mess. Maybe you didn’t understand this is your home but for twenty or thirty lines you will be part of the family. So many families. So many homes longed for, left behind, returned to. Soft light, hard edges. Sweet and harsh and all shades between. Come on in. Let’s sit down together.
. . . . . . .
from In the Palms of Angels, Terri Kirby Erickson, Press 53 © 2011
Wayfarer
He seems like a man
you’d see walking down a long
stretch of road, the kind
with dust
rising
in a red haze beneath the wheels
of pickup trucks, cutting
through fields of golden
wheat. Scudding clouds cast
shadows
across the ground like whales
swimming through clear
water, and the air carries the scent
of grain and loam.
Every few miles, the glint of a silo
(startling against the lonesome
sky)
signals a farm house
where peach pies sit cooling
on window sills, and patterned
carpets are worn-out from parents
pacing to and fro with fretful babies
in their arms.
He’s traveling toward the horizon
with the steady gait of someone
with a place to go, whose tender
gaze
will soon find home, that place
more sacred than communion wafers
nestled in the palms
of angels.
. . . . . . .
Rosary
Down by the creek,
we sit on dry
stones,
our shoes and socks
jumbled in a pile.
The sun
warms our toes
and casts its
net of light
from bank to bank,
where willows
trail their
fingers in the water,
and snakes look
like branches
floating by
them. Mosquitoes
lay their eggs
in stagnant pools,
far from leaves
and grasses snagged
by rocks, twisting
in the current.
Tadpoles swim
in tight formation,
wiggling their tails
in tandem,
as salamanders
scuttle by, searching
for places to nap.
Dragonflies hover,
then hurry
away,
their wings
thrumming a one-note
song – while we,
silent as nuns in prayer,
count the beads
of summer.
. . . . . . .
[Rosary first appeared in Basilica Review; other collections by Terri Kirby Erickson from Press 53 include: Telling Tales of Dusk; A Lake of Light and Clouds; Becoming the Blue Heron.]
Author Page, Terri Kirby Erickson, Press 53, Winston-Salem, NC.
. . . . . . .
V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 
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