A Familiar Fire
By
M.K. Christiansen
Published by Intelligible Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Mary Kathryn Christiansen
To learn more about the author visit her website, Through a Glass Darkly (http://mkatchris.blogspot.com/)
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*****
Winter Sun
Outside my window
Icicles sparkle at dawn:
A star’s fire, frozen.
*****
The Fire
The end of January comes again,
The damp and cold has settled in the room.
I have not figured out the ways of men,
Yet still I stare into the winter’s gloom.
I did not think I’d sit before this fire
And warm my chilling soul this way again.
I had resigned myself that I’d retire
And leave the graceful flickering of this friend.
How temporary is a soul’s delight,
How sad the puny pleasures it desires.
How wondrous that I sit here in the night
And know this as my own familiar fire.
*****
Sonnet on an Infant’s First Birthday
Now, right now, as the moments of this day
Slip through the neck of Time’s steady hourglass,
You sleep the final breaths of your first year.
In slumbering ignorance you make your way
Through a portal, and on my heart, trespass.
Heavy, it mourns the minutes dying here.
And so, I hold your golden head, I stroke
Your velvet curls, I kiss your luscious cheek,
Although it often wakes you. If your eyes
Open, I’ll whisper soft that I awoke
You, to tell you, the love that you will seek
Is here, in baby’s sleep, and mother’s sighs.
Another night will come, another year;
This one, a fading memory from there.
*****
Two Women and the Moon
“I conversed with the moon
As she slid from the East,
As she dipped in the ripples
Her electric fingers,
And wrapped 'round her shoulders
Those sensuous slippings of cloud.
She silenced all but my adoration.
“I spoke with her too.
She was weary with travel then.
High and cold, she hung.
I, tending my goats on the slopes,
Pled her to lean awhile
Against their warm sides.
The wind blew,
She fled West, to the water.”
*****
The Trees
In late spring, when they are fully leaved
And their whispering voices murmur in the morning breeze,
My heart inclines to them.
It must be the dirt in me,
The little crumbs of soil, longing to rest.
‘Return to us,’ they say,
And my soil crumbles away.
To rest my body against their trunks and branches,
And weave my hair among the twigs.
*****
Motherhood
The apple tree told me
It was none of my business
Where the baby apples lay.
I looked anyway.
Tucked among the green
Sun-dipped, mottled and long
Leaves, whispering
As leaves do, hung
Thumb-sized apples
Of identical hue.
By August, the apple tree
Will bow, pregnant and ready
To be rid of them.
Bees will suck juice
From the ones she’s thrown away,
The hot air heady,
Sweet in mid-day.
I will make some use
Of the fat, red fruit.
And the apple tree will say,
Thank you.
*****
Neptune Bows
When Neptune shakes his salty locks
And licks into the land,
Gripping with his tributaries,
Cutting rock and earth with sea,
Branching as a liquid tree,
Gaia sends her minion oaks
With equally invasive hand
Of keel and rib, waving free,
Cutting the weak and liquid sea
With swimming forests, manned.
(Upon beginning Joshua Slocum’s
Sailing Alone Around the World)
*****
The Drive
The slimmest sliver of a moon
Dangles in the blackest sky,
And as I cross the county line
And miss my turn and hum a tune
And watch the valley wishing by –
Why does it fade in such a way
Just when I need its brilliant shine?
Along a strange and perilous lane,
With sheerest bluffs along my right,
And all the landmarks of the day
Swallowed in the maw of night,
Why does the lady wink at me,
And blithely watch me lose my way?
She does not say, she does not say.
I squint into the darkling air
And wonder at her glowing curve,
The finest, thinnest, purest line.
And watching her, I almost swerve
Into the nothing, waiting there.
(Lookout Mountain, Georgia)
*****
Shirley
When we came, her soul had flown to Jesus.
The house was still, the mourning had begun.
And she whose pain had been a daily anguish,
Was deep in the embrace of the Healing One.
The body that was twisted in its illness
The voice that had been silenced for so long,
Was even then arisen in the heavens,
A mouth and voice exulting in new song.
For she is singing as she never did before,
And all her agonies are now undone.
For now she lives; her soul has flown to Jesus,
Deep in the embrace of the Eternal One.
*****
At Mitchells
We went to the mountains to view dying leaves,
Dull this year, against a radiant sky.
The milkweed pod hides its secret symmetries
And fly-away wisps
Under a pale, craggy skin.
A wooly bear with hardly a bit of black
Nibbles its way round my fingers.
At the end of the track one farm has the best view
Of rolling ribbons, red yellow orange green—
They live in town.
We saw the perihelion circle there, before we came.
It’s clearer here, a thin floating elastic, enveloping hills,
Milkweed, bears, farms, and us
At its center.
Two sun dogs blink. The blue dome whirls.
One wide band of cloudy blue is so cold
I could skate on it.
*****
Falmouth
The sea is made of crepe,
Its hem of scalloped lace.
The movement of the breeze
Reveals her lovely knees
Beneath, her rolling thighs
Elicit sailors’ sighs.
Her heaving, liquid breasts
Spew up at their behest,
And then recede in shape.
The sea is made of crepe.
*****
Sonnet on the Birds
Across our valley on a clear-cut hill
A bulldozer pushes the refuse round.
A clear, rhythmic beeping its only sound,
It shifts our garbage in the new landfill.
A flock of brilliant white carrion birds
On brilliant white days of pellucid sky
Lifts from the waste and the bulldozer’s cry,
Rise as one body in a dance absurd.
Slowly they circle in a clockwise wheel,
Never flying to the valley beyond,
To hemlock forest, or to cooling pond,
Riding their invisible carousel.
Are they dancing above the filth below
In ecstasy, in instinct, or in woe?
*****
Sonnet to a Young Friend
Dear friend, be warned as you contemplate love,
That your way will be riddled with peril,
And after many years of the battle
You will ask if the joy has been enough
To offset the sorrow. This fine young man
Who rouses you now, does he resemble
That stooped, battered companion who ambles
Along your aging path, clutching your hand?
If you see in his eyes one who will cry
In regret, ask in need, shrug off anger--
Embrace him -- forgive his regrets, and sure
You will find love; for only in the eyes
Is youth preserved. There, you will still find him
Who loves you, later, when all else is dim.
*****
Trees
Going north to Virginia
The autumn trees rust into winter.
Rich browns and umbers soothe our eyes,
Ribbons of gold ripple along ridges,
Veins of poplar among the oaks.
I ask if any of Jefferson’s trees survive.
The last was cut a year ago,
A massive hollow of bark remains.
Before the house a gracious linden
Kneels to her guests, her limbs extending,
Her elbows buried in Jefferson’s dirt.
His trees are extensive, confusing,
Randolphs and Hemmings running
Along passageways, tripping up stairs.
What kind of man puts his bed inside the wall
Between two rooms?
Going south the colors were duller,
A disappointment of grey.
Any flames of orange, of genius radiance,
Lost in mist and time.
*****
Sonnet for Anne
She led us to her favorite spot on earth,
Set in a shrubby meadow on a hill,
A cabin where her grandpa had his birth.
Its wood exudes an old aroma still
Of fading lives and history astir.
Our road had peeled the hill like an apple
Halfway, and weary, still we followed her,
Above the cabin, through the beech and maple,
To Don Brown’s Knob, or Wilfong’s Knob to some.
Winded, we gazed in silence at the view,
Discovering here the reason they had come,
The panoramic peacefulness they knew.
Each ridge and peak and hollow blanketed –
A rich, enfolding carpet, gold and red.
*****
The Thief
I heard his whispered prayers
That no one else could hear.
He turned to look at me –
His eyes were bright and clear.
We felt our painful breathing
Together as we hung,
And knowing guilt, I knew he died
For things he had not done.
When he had disappointed them,
Refused to be their King,
They thought his death would wipe away
Their foolish reckoning.
Somehow as we hung there,
His crown shone bright to me,
And I was glad I had been brought
To hang upon that tree.
To share his death, to know a little
Of his kingly pain,
To understand, as no one did,
The land where he would reign.
Our words were brief, our breath was short,
But I, his honored guest,
Would be the first to follow him
Into our heavenly rest.
I was called to be there,
In shame and agony,
But glad I am, and safe I rest,
Since Jesus died with me.
*****
Death
In a very few minutes,
With the right cleanser,
Some elbow grease,
And simple water,
I thoroughly erased fifty years
Of finger prints
From the kitchen door.
A million touches,
Darkened into the wood,
Are gone
As if they never were there.
*****
Sonnet on Storing Up
In process of our recent house repair
We found a rather curious affair:
In half a dozen places in the house
We found the silent witness of a mouse.
The dog’s food he had carefully dispatched
In cupboards, shelves and shoes (his favorite cache).
However, after preparations wise
Our mouse met his unfortunate demise.
Now I regret our hasty violence,
For we have abandoned that good house since.
And puzzlingly, since others cannot tell
Its intrinsic beauty, it will not sell.
The mouse, however, loved it, in his way,
I think he had the greater right to stay.
*****
Charleston
I remember Christmases of snow
Through frozen night windows from the back seat,
Passing Ashland, Hurricane, Nitro,
Shrouded mountains, sleepy black rivers, steep streets,
Whose lamps each show a little world of snow,
Arriving late in the magical mountains.
The glass I press sends an icy thrill –
It is cold out there, and still and steep,
The house on the hill waits like a warm jewel
Atop its staff of steps, sleeping in mist.
I ache for this place, mine and not mine,
I long to taste its obscure memories -
To grasp my mother’s beautiful life,
A hazy black and white happiness,
Silent and frozen as these midnight streets.
*****
Sleep now,
The luscious sleep of raindrops
And low thunder in your dreams.
Leaves swirl and mist curls
And a dying fire blows the light out.
Sleep now.
Wake to dusk and gray skies,
The steady drip grows to a long rain
A long afternoon
Of tea and nap and rivulets of thought.
Wake.
Dream again,
Dream of years ago
When you visited a stranger’s house
And slept in her dim parlor
Through a timeless afternoon
Of Chopin and distant voices
Sounding like spattering rain,
Within and without.
Dream
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