Elegy for My Childhood Trees

The live oak where a wooden horse swung, its acorns
sprouting beneath pink azaleas. Beside the kitchen
window, a mimosa whose blossoms my sister

plucked to powder her face before gliding down
a make-believe runway like a beauty queen.
A Bartlett that bloomed white in spring, dropped

yellow globes mid-summer—Mama boiled and packed
pears in Mason jars for a taste of sunshine
in December—and a Kieffer

my grandmother planted at the old homeplace,
stretching its trunk like an arthritic hand,
its branches stooped with ripening fruit.

“Plumb crazy,” my grandmother would say (if she were here)
to see this poisoning of land, clearcutting of trees,
for in her day

pecans lined dirt roads, their green-sickle leaves cloaking
velvet husks that burst to reveal
tawny shells. If nuts were slow

to fall, we threw sticks, shook limbs.
In piney woods, gum tapped by descendants
of slaves yielded turpentine

for sealing ships, dabbing wounds. Cypresses shaded
swamps and brackish ponds, their knees rising
from muddy graves, feathery needles harboring

snakes as boats oared by. Magnolias wore sugar blossoms
the size of dinner plates, blooms Grandmother warned
us not to touch lest they brown and wilt.

Night View from a Bedroom Window

She hides her shine behind the clouds, flirts with stars
I cannot see, winks at planets and galaxies I trust
are there even though the dark obscures
such love affairs, and stories of a face
in her crescent shape or werewolves
howling when she is full
tease in a universe of quarks and strings
where jazz cats belt her pull,
the same pull that guides
tides, morphs flat-chested girls
into full-breasted women
mothers and daughters
who fear the silver
disc may one night
follow her shadow
into the sea
forsake
her cycles
forget
to lure
moonflowers
into midnight bloom.

Breakers

Raking books
from bulging shelves,
I bid farewell

to college companions,
J. Krishnamurti & W. J. Cash;

good riddance to self help
Beattie, Peck, & Covey’s seven.

You have served me well—
but I’m making a break for freedom

like I did that day at the ocean

learning to float

when I asked my mother
to remove her hands
from my back,
closed my eyes
trusted
the swells
the rise
the fall
of moon-spun waves
lapping my face.

Living Room

Windows flank the cottage,
frame pasture outside. Some

days panes prism light so
bright it hurts eyes to gaze

at goats grazing nearby;
other days, mist clouds glass

blurs the fire inside. The
view depends upon where

I stand; the view ever
changing from where I am.

Karen Luke Jackson lives in a cottage on a goat pasture in Western North Carolina. Raised Christian, her meditative practices include penning words of gratitude each morning, centering prayer, and holy listening, one-on-one, in circles of trust, and while walking among oaks, hemlocks, and pines in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Karen’s oral history background, retreat experience, and clowning escapades provide a latticework for her writing. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Ruminate, Friends Journal, Broad River Review, One, Great Smokies Review, Christian Feminism Today, Kestrel, and Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction. GRIT, a chapbook chronicling her sister’s life as Clancey the Clown, is forthcoming in 2020.

A Center for Courage & Renewal facilitator since 200l, Karen has a doctorate in education and has led leadership and renewal programs for clergy, educators, nonprofit directors, and interfaith groups seeking to sustain their callings. Whether sitting in silence on her porch, teaching a class, or serving as an Anam Cara, Karen searches for life-giving “role/soul” connections and helps others do the same. In her work and writing, she witnesses how stories and poems help people awaken to sacred mysteries that transform everyday lives.

More on Karen Luke Jackson’s work can be found on our Links page.