Another Day of Rain
The stack of poems
on the desk builds,
like clouds gathering
where sea shakes sky’s
hand. Words rainfall,
arrange by line, sound,
patter the windows,
water the raspberries.
I open the door, welcome
the through-traveler
storm.
Mega Ship
When the Ovation
of the Seas docked
in Sitka, we drove
to see its spectacle:
Bionic bars, four
swimming pools,
skydiving machine,
surfing simulator.
It seemed half
the town showed
up to see firsthand
18 floating stories
from the safety
of firm ground. It
could have been
a May Fest, a half-
circle of held hands
around the port side
of the docked ship.
And later, I watched
it cross the sound
for open sea, grow
tiny in its quiet
departure.
Alaska Summer Pie
Our first attempt baking a mixed
berry pie: blue, huckle, three salmonberries
combined. Painstakingly, our girl picked
each single fruit by hand, included enough
greens to make salad if such leaves were tasty.
If measured by crop or crust alone, pastry
could sustain us. Its sweetness the antidote
to winter, the ruse of forever summer.
Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing Alaskan. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Alaska Anchorage), has authored two books of poetry – What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018) and Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017) – and is the poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 