The World Above
we came across
a wooden handmade six-step ladder
designed on a pine crate-box
along a dusty red dirt road
in the Verde Valley
fields of barley swayed, both sides
a symphony of grain rustling,
a whispering in the breeze
climbing, standing at the top,
gazing at the clouds
how I wish
I could have heard your voice sooner,
now, who created this moment
beneath twilight,
as the Gambel’s quail ran by?
Mary L. Serantoni is a poet based in Arizona, originally from Chicago, Illinois. Her work appears in Poets for Science, Farraday Newsome: Memento Vitae, My Body Is Your Nest for Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum exhibition, Museum of Northern Arizona’s PoetryMaps exhibitions (2024, 2025), Amethyst Review (UK), Blue Heron Review (Spring 2026), Syncopation
Literary Journal, CAN (Vol.5, Issue 2) and forthcoming in Zephyr Haiku –
Winter Issue. She holds a BA from Chicago’s DePaul University, and is a
member of a local Poetry Workshop through a local nonprofit. @serantonimary
Amethyst Review 