Journal of Writing & Environment

Pilgrims

Poetry by Sandra Marchetti

Poem 1 of 2

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Sandra Marchetti’s debut full-length collection of poems, Confluence, will be published in Gold Wake Press’ 2014 Print Series. An illustrated fine press edition of her essays and poetry entitled A Detail in the Landscape is also forthcoming from Eating Dog Press this summer. Previously, Sandra was named the winner of Midwest Writing Center’s 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest for her volume The Canopy. She was also a finalist for Gulf Coast’s 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ohio State’s The Journal, Subtropics, Redactions, The Hollins Critic, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, Stone Highway Review, Phoebe, and Thrush Poetry Journal, among others. She was also an artist’s fellow at Vermont Studio Center in the summer of 2013. You can find her at sandrapoetry.net.

In some ways I see “Pilgrims” as a triptych of mirrors closed inward. The sky, the river, and the shoreline are ecosystems featuring their own life cycles, sounds, and imagery; however, each gestures toward and against the next. Of course, the Great Blue Heron inhabits each of these scenes, a Midwestern fixture that will often stand in one place for hours then disappear from the corner of your eye.

A meteor slung

over the river thrums

the sky’s drumhead.

The stream stitches itself,

a crosshatched quilt

lofted atop the bedrock.

Rivulets wisp the bank,

grind a heron’s feet

into sand; prints

etch a place

where cells shut off,

one by living one.