OH BEAUTIFUL

by Chris Reed

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

For the country’s 250th birthday celebration

my sister texts a collage of photos of our mother

in her last years before dying at 100.

At first it seems a strange birthday message

for the nation, until I start looking at the photos.

In my mother’s face, her seated posture, 

often holding flowers or her cat on her lap,

I see the inevitable wear of years, time’s destruction,

a loss of elasticity and nimbleness, 

a loss of focus, purpose and endless energy,

a loss of fitting in to how things work and get done.

 

Yet in her eyes and smile in photo after photo,

I see acceptance and memories of past joys

and loves, her ocean sailings, mountain climbs, 

her shore walks, and dance among multitudes.

I see a hint of denial, pretending that her place

in the family of things is not coming to an end,

only her eyes betraying her knowledge 

that the journey has already started.

Her face tells me all this, but also tells me 

that amid her brokenness and joys and losses,

ever courageous, she is finding new love

and meaning in this, her season of endings.

 

With no flowers for you, let me still say,

Happy Birthday America.

Chris Reed cared for her mother in her last two years of life and found beauty in her mother's decline in health and purpose.  Finishing Line Press recently published a chapbook of Reed's poems about this time, Two Years and Two Months.

LIGHT

by Chris Reed

Flakes of snow glow orange like fireflies

over a winter field of bare and capped heads,

candles held high in the snow swept vigil.

Light gathers itself to the campus lamp,

lone glow behind a policeman’s head, 

his face like ours in shadow.

 

We connect light to morning and sight,

to warmth and touch, to seasons

of planting and harvest,

and in our winters, to what still returns

after the night, the storm, and the losses.

 

But light doesn’t care for our veneration.

Indifferent, it turns the glow back on us.

Red radiates off the side of a face at a window.

reflects the ambulance light in the night,

red hands holding back the drapes.

 

Flashes of gunfire on Bondi Beach

found celebrants honoring a festival

of light, light as healing and possibility,

as the connection and love that endures,

telling the story of an ancient flame.

 

I look up from my screen of news and photos

as light sends the shadow of a bird outside

my window, flying across my pale nubby rug. 

Sunlight paints the many leaves of the jade tree

and stretches along the floor to my feet.

 

Light remembers that in the beginning

it took on the job of radiance and promise,

and we took on the job of repairing

the vessels that we are, 

so that we might hold the light. 

 

In recent news photos, light is reserved,

embarrassed for us, 

embarrassed to have been the gold on snow,

the red glare on the cheek at the window,

the sun setting over a bloody beach,

— and asks — Can’t you do better than this?

Chris Reed has been writing poetry for five years. As a writer and a retired Unitarian minister she values the work of social justice and witnessing that is done through poetry. But admits she has sometimes had a difficult time reading news stories during this last year. And this is not a comment on her eyesight. Her first chapbook Two Years and Two Months was published last month by Finishing Line Press.

SABBATH

by Chris Reed

The deepening fall stalls my step,
invites a seasonal sabbath,
a slowing of time, luring me
to witness the dying world,
the retreat of light, warmth, color,
a trail of endings,
this yearly dress rehearsal.

Here is the world. 
Leaves, red-rimmed, rustle silently
like yesterday’s still photos from Gaza,
Israel, Ukraine, blood-tinged. 
The deck is wet from recent rain,
as water runs out in war-torn lands,
runs out for all, as rivers 
and aquifers shrink, while torrents
wash cities into the sea.

A rest. A time away from politics,
like leaving the red-faced relatives,
arguing in the sunroom, laced
with whisky fumes, surrounded
by blue-blossomed African violets.
I’d sneak into the kitchen 
filled with the smells and warmth 
of my grandmother’s baking bread
as she hugged me and nodded,
a knowing smile on her face.

Was it in Coetzee, I read that politics
is just a form we use for the hate
and frustration already there?
Was it in Miller, I read that when
as children, love is denied, politics
and how we treat our own children,
are where we fine-tune our cruelty?

The leaves turn paler, start to yellow,
the sky, a cleaner blue after the rains.
Sabbath is about sitting with gratitude,
sitting with possibilities,
sitting with some kind of god, 
some kind of love.
I wait.


Author’s Note: The seed for this poem was this week's New York Times story about the Amazon River.


Chris Reed is a retired Unitarian minister. Her poems have recently been published in River Heron Review, The NewVerse News, and US1 Worksheets, among other journals.

KINTSUGI

by Chris Reed

Kintsugi is the Japanese art or repairing broken pottery

with epoxy mixed with gold dust.

Cracks and repairs are not hidden but highlighted,

imperfections, part of an object’s life.

Sickly yellow lights the landscape,

like a room lit by an aging lampshade.

Great smoke plumes from Canadian forests,

blanket eastern farms, cities and shores,

swallow a line of green glittering trees

and a neighbor’s brown house

as if the fires are a mile,

and not a country away.

I taste ash on my tongue,

absorb smoke through sinuses,

and wonder about the birds, recently migrated

north across Lake Erie to nest,

On the deck, potted salmon-edged geraniums,

smaller blooms of pink and white,

and spikes of lavender, sit abjectly

in the aberrant light.

Rosemary and thyme rub against

each other in a blue pot with a gold seam.

My sister, the potter who shaped the planter,

repaired it in seven days,

mixing epoxy and resins with gold dust,

painting seams, fitting pieces together,

then aging the repaired pot in a large dark box. 

The trick, she said, is to know

that it is even more beautiful repaired.

Burnt ash in the air evokes memories

of not so distant atrocities and tragedies,

yet, seems a hairline fracture

in the ongoing dropping of our world.

Pillaging of nature, wars of aggression,

greed-driven power plays,

hate crimes and death-dealing viruses,

crack the thin ceramic of creation.

Lumpy veins of gold witness

our attempted repairs.

Is there room on this spiderweb

for another seam of gold. And how to start?

Epoxies of novenas and pilgrimages

don’t work anymore.

That god has picked up his play things. 

And even if we find the gold dust,

do we have a shoebox large enough?

And will we remember the trick?

Like others who live near or in the New York City area, Chris Reed was not only concerned about the extreme air quality conditions, but eerily reminded of the empty streets during the first year of Covid, and the indelible images of the air over New York after 9/11. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, US1 Worksheets, and The New Verse News.

CHIPPED JESUS

by Chris Reed

Yesterday a Ukrainian woman

and her two children, lay in the rubble,

three esses, as booted rescuers

tried to save the father, still alive.

This morning a post bombardment

photo. In a sea of debris

a lone building stands without

exterior wall, rooms open

to the world like a dollhouse

with furniture intact, a china cabinet

unbroken, a pillow still on the sofa.

From a last cardboard box,

my mother’s bequest, I unfold old

newspaper to reveal a shepherd,

familiar figure of a once loved 

childhood creche, his staff broken.

I unwrap a king, crown intact,

and a Jesus, chipped, cradles

in my open palm, white plaster edge

of his missing side, ragged against

his painted flesh

In past winters he lay in a crib 

of cotton balls we took from 

the bandage drawer in the bathroom.

Returning the figures and crumpled paper

to the box, I wonder if it’s a sin

to throw it away on my way to ShopRite.

He won’t like being in that trash bin,

but then, no one does.

Chris Reed finds the reading and writing of poetry to be a moving medium for letting the absurdities, sorrows, anger and joys of life speak to each other. Her poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Little Heron Review, and US1 Worksheets.

POSTLUDE

by Chris Reed

Image source: In the Hills

You wanted a requiem

a dies irae,

a solemn Gregorian chant,

or maybe just a photo album

of those who’ve left,

a chorus of auld lang syne,

some cup of kindness,

or the rage 

of trumpets blaring

through the sepulchres,

a judgement.

I hear the drip

of too late rain

in burned forests,

a tremulous rhythm.

No more news please,

no rising harmonic summary. 

The dead don’t want repose,

they wanted to live.

Year of misery,

death and deceit,

it’s almost time to go.

You’re already shrugging

into your jacket,

No need to turn around

and show me your expression.

You don’t have to say

goodbye.

Chris Reed is a writer who has found meaning and solace and connection in the reading and writing of poetry during this pandemic.

THIS IS YOUR WEEKEND BRIEFING

by Chris Reed

Sunday, November 15, 2020

My mother napped yesterday,

while I finished Swann’s Way.

Her water retention is down,

and we hear that someone

is unlocking the secrets of aging.

There are no words for the US 

reaching eleven million cases

of coronavirus this morning,

although the eucharistic minister 

wore a mask when she delivered

the host earlier.

The bird feeders were filled today

and promptly visited by a finch

and a red-bellied woodpecker.

Currently we are recording 

the Giants-Eagles game, in which

Daniel Jones and the Giants are

getting downfield, as constriction

threatens a transfer of power,

school reopenings and life itself.

I search for an artificial wreath. 

We have some breaking news—

a stag is walking past the window,

and we are making the call

that he is at least four years old. 

My mother sees him and reaches

for the word that means him,

although we still have no word

on reality out of the White House.

The Giants won this one.  Enjoy

what remains of your weekend.

Although relatively new to poetry writing, during the pandemic and sheltering in place with his post-stroke mother,  reading and writing poetry have become Chris Reed’s go-to survival activities.  Attending a zoom weekly poetry workshop has also been a gift and helped sustain sanity.