A Familiar Fire Read online

A Familiar Fire

  By

  M.K. Christiansen

  Copyright 2012 Mary Kathryn Christiansen

  To learn more about the author visit her website, Through a Glass Darkly (https://mkatchris.blogspot.com/)

  *****

  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 sou
nd,

  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

  ###

  How to connect with me online;

  At my website, Through a Glass Darkly

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