The Image
Crow's Nest
Charis Noviskie
Dizzy world, I clutched horizon
From my crow’s nest over seething seas
Waves and whirlpools of fracturing foam
Twisting sails I stretched for home
Ocean crossings find nothing still…
Harbour, why?
I found you at dawn, but by dusk
You tore down your piers and docks
And stripped your longstanding locks
—And changed.
This crow of the sea
Is sick with swaying.
But you scrapped your stones and hurried erosion,
And offended my sea legs with land in motion
—And changed.
So refuge flees
To my old nests of shifting seas.
And my crow’s quest
Continues.
Sandcastles
Charis Noviskie
I built my homes in the sand.
I don’t think you understand how I fear
The tide, unrhythmed by season’s time.
How I huddle in the grains that fleet from my fingers
And cling to my castles, and patch the saltwater
Rivulets of my sandy battlements as they melt
Before my ocean eyes—
Then build again.
Friend,
I am tired.
Seasick
Charis Noviskie
​Like iridescent oil on these restless waves,
When my world changes—it always changes—
I can dissolve in the swells and slip
On the shallow surfaces, that swing so sickly.
There is no horizon to grasp.
There is no anchor to cast
To the bottomless sea.
But what relentless waves will teach me,
There is only one
Rock—He never changes.
Gladly I throw myself upon Him.
Book-Bound
Charis Noviskie
Coming home is
Sewing these pages back to the spine
Stitching bundles months clutched,
Miles carried,
To the chapters before
Between the well-worn covers of my life
At home,
Sheaves of piercing hues dripped
Smears and smudges
Can coalesce and dry
Reordered in binding
And cut down to size
At last, then
I can wipe clean tomorrow’s pen.
Below
Charis Noviskie
​Cruel sonnet that sits
On the stack of so many—
Where less than best is buried
Below the smoking bullet hole called
“Success.”
The public nails tight on that
Idea of where it’s all meant to be.
We make our gods,
Fame and fortune to measure meaning…
But even if no one read my words,
I’d write them.
I’d write them like the roots of the oaks
And campfire sparks in tendrils of smoke.
I’d write them like the dew on spider’s webs
And the ripples in sand left by waters’ ebb
I’d write them like a tiny blue flower
In a meadow where no one goes,
Which blooms under the sun and smiles
And dies unshown.
But it is
More than enough.
Kitten Hidden
Charis Noviskie
Come little soul,
Why do you flee? The drop of a pin
Makes you skid like a kitten—
To the darkest corner, behind the laundry machine,
Where with self tongue-lashings,
You try to be clean.
And you let every mistake
Come in between—
As if you weren’t brought home,
As if you weren’t costly claimed, cleaned
And named.
Tell me, little soul,
Why you hide when you could bask—
Fully open, at last unmasked—
In grace that loves you whole?
