Elemental Death

 

I am not convinced by those who embrace
A fiery end, gray ashes, and an urn.

Some find the licking flames a restful place

To lay their body in, and choose to burn.

I have a terror of those flames. I feel
The coolness of the earth a better choice.
Earth to earth, they murmur, and soil to soil.
Buried blood has sometimes had a voice.

Heaving waves have stolen many a corpse,
And many a willing body has leapt
To float and then descend beneath the oars.
And with Ophelia wash their way to death.

Why drown? Why burn? Why suffocate in dirt?
I’ve changed my mind – I want to die in air.
The wind will loose my linen winding shirt
And swirl its tender fingers through my hair.

July 11, 2026

Bayboro, NC

The Passing of Beauty

 

My grandmother’s mantel clock chimes familiarly.

It is forty-five minutes late.

Autumn leaves shimmer yellow and

their light quivers on the sheets

where my mother lies,

whispering her breaths.

Her old toes wiggle out

into the air.

I ask if she is comfortable.

The house is quiet as we wait,

As the grandchildren drive here

to see her a last time.

Chopin, our favorite, faintly drifts

in the air as she breathes, and stops,

and breathes.

I lie on the couch in the afternoon,

listening for her.

My eyes close, then flutter open

and look for the sheets to lift

and fall. And lift.

A pot of spaghetti sauce bubbles

quietly on the stove,

Her recipe, her million meals,

her love, her children

and grandchildren.

Her life, such a beautiful life.

Even now, such a beautiful life.

White Oak, WVa

Sept. 12, 2025

Sacrament

As the twilight cools to evening

He will lead me through the garden, 

Past the angels, who will bow,

Past the other trees aplenty 

To the one with heavy boughs.

For this tree we've all been hung'ring,

For its fruit our bodies long.

But before we reach its shade

He kneels with me beside a brook

Of crystal water shimmering.

We cup our hands together there -

His old scars are faint and healed -

And dip, and then together sip.

He takes this sacrament with me

As we were always meant to do.

The rivulet of life begins

A transformation within me.

Then we stand before the tree,

Its fearful fruit will soon become

Flesh of my flesh, bone of bone.

He reaches out and picks the fruit,

He breaks its flesh and gives to me

The sacred life. We eat together

Of the Tree of Life at last!

Now the sacrament is done.

I will live within the garden,

I will sleep within its shade.

I will dance among its flowers,

I will speak among the trees,

I will live eternally.

- Jesus said, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." from Luke 23:43

- "And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost." from Revelation 22:17

- "and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever ” from Genesis 3:22

Bayboro, NC 2024

Copyright by the author

Honeysuckle

 I smelt it yesterday in a viney hedge.

Today I see its blooms, white and yellow.

It pulls me into childhood, into memory.

So I pick a yellow one, squeeze its tip,

And pull gently, waiting for the drip.

Ah, honey dew! One perfect nectar!

When I was five, my brother

Whom I adored, showed me how

To harvest honeysuckle.

We spent a golden hour in the backyard

Sipping to our hearts' content.

I asked if we could fill a bucket

one drop at a time, and he said

technically, yes. Magic, I thought.

He lifted me on his shoulders and

I was taller than I'll ever be.

Neither of us learned the secret of the honeysuckle,

Neither gathered a bucket drop by drop.

I have lost that brother to the pain of life,

But today I tasted honey dew and remember him.

Bayboro, NC, 2024

copyright by the author

Looking Down

My earliest memory is deep leaves

and my feet, kicking and walking,

holding someone's left hand.

Somehow I always knew it was

my grandparents' farm, although

there is nothing else, only

deep leaves, dry and crunching

leaves all around my feet,

I'm looking down because

that's what children do.

Then, it seems only moments later,

he is walking on my left,

my son's little son,

holding my hand as we walk

along a gravel road to the farm.

He kicks the rocks and studies them.

He grasps my fingers firmly.

I watch him and turn my face

up to the blue above.

The forsythia glows like sun.

Look at my shadow! he says.

It's so big!

He is looking down, because

that's what children do.

Copyright by the author

Renick WV, 2024

Awakened

The soft glow behind the curtains

must be morning at last.

The moon is long set.

I am in my mother's house.

She finishes one more sleep

in the room beneath mine.

I am old,

and she is ancient,

Yet still the mother bond

pulls firm as ever --

The body that encased me,

The voice that whispered

the mother secrets that

no infant can remember,

no woman can forget.

She is here yet.

The soft glow of morning,

The deep green fescue growing,

The distant lowing of cows

in a neighbor's field, calling,

Come, my love, my baby,

Come home to me again.

copyright, M.K. Christiansen

August, 2023

one word poems

 Margaret (Mags), dear blogging friend, has set me on a rabbit trail of poetry, for which shove I am very, very grateful.

I had stopped writing poetry. No idea why. I assumed it was because I'd aged out of the poetry-writing years of life. It was too much of a struggle, too hard. And the ideas for poems did not come to me as clearly as before. They used to come into my head and stick like a burr and develop themselves until I had to spit them out on paper.

Mags gave me this idea: write a poem each day in February, prompted by one unusual word.

I thought, "Hmm." I read a few of her one-word-prompt writings and liked them very much indeed. I thought, only to myself, "Why not? Why not make a little folder on my desktop and write a poem from each of these little words?" The little words are a list of unusual vocabulary words I gathered nearly 20 years ago while reading Trollope or Goudge, I'm not sure which.

I wrote it on an Elisabeth Elliot newsletter, back before such things came via email. Somehow, I kept it all these years. Miraculously, it was in the first place I searched for it!

I've written a poem most days in February since I started. I told myself I'm writing them ONLY for myself. I do not have to consider a reader. I do not have to consider if it is understood, if it is structured, appealing, tight, edited. Nothing. I spit it out when the word prompt has worked its magic -- i.e., when the word from the list has sparked an image in my head, an idea with an image. Then I write it down and try only not to explain, but to show. Poems that explain things are boring from the first word.

They often end abruptly and look a bit like ee cummings's, but they feel right to me, like good chocolate on my tongue. Perhaps now that I'm old I'm ready to write poetry just for me and not care about the world of readers, rather like wearing flowy gypsy skirts at last. Here's one I think I'll share, short and sweet:

plouter

when I am old enough

to play in mud puddles

big deep mud puddles

bottomless puddles

splashing laughing

in my Sunday shoes

again

then I will know

it’s time to go

2/16/2022

Autumn Road

The storm arrived in sleep's deepest hours,

And stayed 'til noon in spitting showers.

Its chilly wind disturbed the weather.

We dashed inside to don our sweaters. 

All along the road the leaves were flying,

They seemed alive and in no way dying.

Fluttering, fighting, and flying down,

Yellow and red, green and brown.

Above it all the gray-blue sky

Was watercolor majesty.

I am skipping along the road,

The wind has loosened my heavy load.

And I am happy that autumn's come,

The sultry days of summer, done.

I am alive and in no way dying,

Like the maple leaves, free and flying.

copyright, M.K. Christiansen

When It Feels Like Fall

It feels like fall

in spite of the date

which tells me it's

August 28th.

It feels like fall

in spite of the sweat,

and the sauna heat

says it's not fall yet.

The corn says it's fall

as it rustles and whispers,

as its poor little stalks

grow crisper and crisper.

The leaves say it's fall

as their greens become brown.

They look tired of summer

and long to fall down.

In the early of morning

when the wild geese call

when the new mist rises

It feels like fall.

by M.K. Christiansen

Today, it's raining.

 The high today will be 76 degrees. It feels like fall. I know it's early August, but everything within me longs for autumn. I know we have two months of heat remaining, but it's so easy to imagine that today is October, that today I will put on a sweater, that today I will walk among the fallen leaves.

So in honor of October-that-is-not-here, I'll share this poem ... again.

October

by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes' sake, if they were all.

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost.

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost --

For the grapes' sake along the wall.

There are many elegant poems whose every word seems wondrously and perfectly placed, but to me, I think this is the most perfect poem for subject, rhythm, technique, and effect.

The rain is not insignificant. My chicken pen is a mass of soggy mud, and the hens don't know where to go, to get their little feet out of the wet. Their feathers droop with sogginess. Brownie is being broody and is in the final days of sitting on a clutch of a dozen eggs. She is the only dry hen, hunkered in her broody box with her feathers fluffed over the eggs.

Beau and I are on the couch watching the Olympic runners give it their all in Tokyo. It's a day to stay inside, so I think I'll go back to painting, which I've taken a break from for a couple of weeks. Instead, I've been weaving and making youtube videos, which is creative in its own right.

It's been exactly a year since Adam was diagnosed with his illness and we began this long road of treatment. This morning he is at the internist's getting lots of blood drawn for various tests. One of them will determine whether he is heading into remission and can come off of his immunosuppressant medication. (Most organ transplant patients take between 1500-200 mg of this med each day; Adam takes 4500 mg daily.) We are very eager for him to be off this drug, and give his immune system a chance to work again. He has been full of so much anxiety lately regarding all this. We hope for good news.

But today -- I'm loving the sound of rain outside, and a snug, dry house inside. Time for a good, hot cup of tea and some time in my studio. I may paint. But I may stare out the window.

Thoughts on Frost, and Being an Ear-Reader

 I've always loved Robert Frost's poems, and feel that anyone who thinks them simplistic hasn't studied them well. For many years I always had my students read them aloud. Somehow his poems (especially his long, narrative ones), like Shakespeare's work, must be read aloud. Now I know why.

Frost is all about the sounds of words and sentences - their tones and rhythms, what he calls "sound posturing." He says the best readers are the slow ones who sound out everything on the page to hear -- really, I think, to taste with the mind's ear -- the lusciousness, the flavors of the words. Just as flavors are spicy, sharp, creamy, sweet, bitter, so are words. Frost knew this deeply. It bothered him that most writers had little understanding of the importance of sound; they wrote for grammar and technical meaning. He calls this the "distinction between the grammatical sentence and the vital sentence." The real life of the sentence is in its sound.

If you want to read more of Frost's thoughts on this wonderful, freeing, enlivening idea, here is a link:
Robert Frost on the 'Sound of Sense' 

This piece was written by Dr. Karl Maurer, I think, of University of Dallas. If you don't want to read the entire 19 pages, here's an excerpt from a letter Frost wrote:

"It is so [by listening to sentence-sounds] and not otherwise that we get the variety that makes it fun to write and read. The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I have known people who could read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They can get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

 "Remember that the sentence sound often says more than the words. It may even as in irony convey a meaning opposite to the words.

 "I wouldn’t be writing all this if I didn’t think it the most important thing I know. I write it partly for my own benefit, to clarify my ideas for an essay or two I am going to write some fine day (not far distant.) 

"To judge a poem or piece of prose you go the same way to work—apply the one test—greatest test. You listen for the sentence sounds. If you find some of those not bookish, caught fresh from the mouths of people, some of them striking, all of them definite and recognizable, so recognizable that with a little trouble you can place them and even name them, you know you have found a writer."

This concept rang true like a clarion bell the instant I read it! I am not a bad reader because I sound the sentences out in my head. Rolling them around on my tongue and appreciating the voice of the writer is not a waste of time. Frost would say that's what reading is all about -- I am extracting additional meaning from the sentences that other people are sadly missing. What a thought! 

All the writers I dearly love, I love for their voices. I hardly care what they write about. They can write about their potatoes in the garden, or a murder most grisly. Only give me their voice. What irony happens when a writer with gorgeous sounds describes a horrific scene? Faulkner shows us this in all his glory! What does that depth of irony in his novels tell us about the world he's painting for us?

Think of the times that language is stripped of its technical, grammatical meaning, and you are left only with sound: listening to a foreign language spoken, or listening to a nonsense story or poem. (Go read "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut," for instance - it's hilarious!) The words themselves give no meaning at all. All meaning must come from the sound ... and not just inflection. We humans communicate so much meaning by that "sound posturing."

I don't know if I have any good poems left in me; I may have aged out of the poem-writing years. But if I do, I hope they will be gleaned from sounds. As Frost says of writing poems, "And unless we are in an imaginative mood, it is no use trying to make them, they will not rise." Perhaps I should start listening.

For more of Frost's lovely poetry, click here.

"To Autumn" by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~~~~~

I love this luscious poem. It is so thick and rich that one must read it slowly, carefully, attentively, like one would eat a very large, very ripe peach. 

Keats gives us a strange poem: iambic pentameter, but not a sonnet; 11 lines per stanza but not a roundel; close to a Spenserian stanza, but not quite.

Notice the poem's structure. First stanza: autumn's ripe bounty. Second stanza: autumn personified... what would he look like? Third stanza: the music of autumn.

I'm ready for autumn; are you? The greens are browning. Many leaves are down. I feel the plants are whispering, "May we rest now?" Nature has given over her rich bounty to us to keep, and soon she'll ask for sleep. 

I gauge the seasons by my fig tree. Today it is thin, each long branch topped by a tuft of green. The fruit is gone to my freezer and the birds.

On the ground you see what has died and fallen already, enriching its own soil.

A Poem a Day in Winter

I'm keeping a candle lit on the table throughout January.

A blogging friend, Michelle DeRusha, writes and sends out encouraging newsletters. She's taken on a challenge in January: to write one poem each day.

I used to write poetry. I felt convicted. Why not write a poem each day? I know why I stopped writing poems -- because I didn't think they were good enough. I'd rather write no poems than write bad poems.

But Michelle was honest: she's no poet. She doesn't expect to write one brilliant poem. She's writing them for fun, and some will be better and some will be worse. How can that be a bad thing?

She's right. So I took her up on the challenge about a week ago. I've written 8 poems so far, one each day. Some are okay. Most are bad. I may not share a single one here. But I thought I'd ask you all -- would you consider writing a little poem each day for a month? I'm calling mine "Winter Poems." They're simply numbered. I hate coming up with a name for a poem. If nobody ever read yours, you could write whatever you wanted! I think we should all give it a try.

The Neuse River yesterday, while crossing on the ferry to Havelock.

The Mother of Saul

Because I was a virgin girl of ten

The men from across the River Jordan

Spared me and my friends. The rest, murdered --

My mother, father and all my brothers.

We were taken to Gibeah; the blood

Of murdered women whispered up to us

From the ground. We were given to soldiers

Who were twenty and thirty years older

Than us. And we became wives and mothers.

No one remembers me, the wife of Kish.

No one remembers me, mother of Saul.

I am a virgin of Jabesh-Gilead.

On the day I died they hung my grandsons

And great-grandsons, little boys though they were,

In that wretched city I was taken to.

We girls, ever caught up in the fury

of the foolish vows made by foolish men.

Copyright by the author

Oct. 13, 2019

After the storm year,

The tiger lilies will not bloom.

Rest from your sorrows.

Bread

Like all of us, it begins in dark earth.

A speck grain in dirt awaiting water.

Much waiting, much later, it reaches air,

And three elements are knitted again --

Grain, water, bubbling breath, awaiting fire.


Deemed the humblest of meals, of little worth

Except to inmates as workhouse fodder,

Yet daily we whisper for it in prayer,

The food of angels, descended to men,

The body of God, our hungry desire.

copyright by M.K. Christiansen
Bayboro, NC
Nov. 21, 2018

November Day

There are days that should be cold but aren’t,

Days of balmy peace in mid November.

Full but never overflowing duties,

Chickens, herbs, and simmering pots of soup,

Windows rimming tranquil skies and beauty,

Barns and dripping eaves and stillness ~

These are perfect days of soul, I warrant.

Days with nothing I shall long remember,

The summer suckers stretch from the fruit trees

Into greyness, the long-forgotten fruit

Rotting warmly into winter’s cruelty,

But not yet. Not yet that illness ~

This day harks back to nothing, bodes nothing,

Perfect in its breath-holding twilight hour.

Bayboro, NC
November 12, 2018
copyright by M.K. Christiansen

The Country Bedroom

In The Joy of the Snow, Elizabeth Goudge describes each home she'd lived in. She loved homes, and her homes, a fondness that we share. Her last home was Rose Cottage in Oxfordshire. Like other very old English homes, its ceilings were graced with ships' timbers, and Goudge sometimes felt her old cottage was a bit like a ship. A dear friend sent her a copy of this little poem, found on the wall of another cottage in Devon. It's by Frances Darwin Cornford.

The Country Bedroom

My room's a square and candle-lighted boat,
In the surrounding depths of night afloat;
My windows are the portholes, and the seas
The sound of rain on the dark apple-trees.

Seamonster-like beneath, an old horse blows
A snort of darkness from his sleeping nose,
Below, among the drowned daisies. Far off, hark!
Far off one owl amidst the waves of dark.

I love this poem. It's nearly perfect, small, consistent, sensorily appealing, easy in its flow (as a rocking boat), with a strong, fascinating metaphor at its core. If I were teaching it, I'd ask the students one question: What do the daisies drown in -- How are they drowned?

Goudge found that at her cottage she had the owl and the old horse and the apple trees. The poem seemed meant for her. I've nearly finished her little autobiography now.

Insist on Beauty as a Human Calling

So many websites and videos have come my way online in the last couple of days, and they are congealing into something. A friend shared an interview with poet John O'Donohue, described as a philosopher who "insisted on beauty as a human calling." That phrase grabbed my mind. 

You'd expect a poet to fervently defend such a concept. But why would anyone have to insist that beauty is a human calling? Shouldn't that be a given? Is it because we long ago accepted the adage, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"? How can a poet embrace beauty as his life's calling when everyone's definition of beauty will be different? (This interview is well worth reading. O'Donohue's focus on the inner human landscape is one I plan to ponder.)

Another friend sent me a link to Nature 365, a site that posts a gorgeous video from nature each day. (Please click over and watch a couple of their brief videos!) Does it show my fragility that I long to view a calming video of nature each day? That I need to look at it all day, out my window? In today's ugly world, is beauty a salve? A distraction? An opiate? A dream of eternity? 

Our world seems to be engaging in and entertained with the ugly, more and more -- ugly behavior, ugly relationships, ugly words, ugly gestures, ugly news. When did we give up on beauty and decide, "It's no use. Ugly is winning"?

To be more specific, here's an excellent video by Keith Getty, church musician. I don't know much about the Gettys, and haven't used their music, but his message here is compelling -- we should be careful what we sing in worship, careful to sing of the beautiful, careful that we teach our children of the beautiful. The world will instruct them completely in the ugly. He describes Cecil Francis Alexander, poet and hymn-writer.  Dissatisfied with what children were singing in church, she set out to write songs for children herself, and gave us "All Things Bright And Beautiful" and "Once in Royal David's City." 

The fourth site I enjoyed this morning was an interview with Susan Wise Bauer, my favorite modern educator. Among other things, she emphasizes a parent's crucial role to constantly remind her children that the negative voices -- the words that tell them they're not good enough, they can't do it, they should doubt themselves -- are not the voices they should listen to. Those negative words are not the true inner voice. We can't block those voices, but we can recognize them for what they are. In other words, recognize the ugly voices inside us, and instead give more volume to the beautiful ones. This wisdom from Bauer touched me deeply because this is parenting that I can still do, in fact I can do it more, with adult children. They need to hear it as much now as they did ten years ago -- you are beautiful, God loves you, I love you, pursue what is beautiful in your life, pursue kindness and goodness, believe in yourself and your gifts, don't give in to the ugly. 

This is a human calling, and it's no surprise that the poets, when everyone else has forgotten, are the ones to remind us of it.

Tea Sympathy

The friendly kettle boils the water

Only as the flames grow hotter.

"It sings!" we say, but we are wrong,

For screaming best describes its song.

And while we sip our humble brew,

Who amongst us says, "Thank you,"

Unto the kettle, singed below,

Who waits again, the flames to know.