Poetry by Christine Andersen
My daughter and her husband
renovated a house on Lake Champlain.
She sent pictures of the expansive view
from their living room,
how the magenta sunset tinged the water,
the way grass was filling in on the slope leading down to the dock.
A few doors down, her mother-in-law is disappearing.
She can’t remember where the silverware drawer is
or how the pocket door slides open.
She tells the same stories over and over
as if delivering new news.
Stares at the lake trying to recall its name.
My son-in-law bought several packages of wildflower
seeds and tilled the ground close to the shore.
He had visions of daisies and Queen Anne’s lace
and an assortment of yellow, purple, and red blossoms
leaning on green stems with bees and butterflies feeding,
the ground firmly set against heavy rain by the tangle of roots.
Wildflowers can bring the outside indoors.
Would perhaps help his mother remember
daisies were always her favorite flower.
How she would set them on the breakfast table
when he picked them for her as a young boy.
They would pluck the petals one by one,
say, “I love you, I love you not,”
always magically ending on “I love you.”
When the daisies grew in clumps,
he carried a bouquet of memory to her doorstep
and handed her a flower.
She haltingly plucked the white petals one by one,
placed them in his outstretched hand.
Whispered in a child’s voice, “I love you.”
Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who lives in Connecticut with five hounds. She has published over 100 poems. Her poetry book “To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone” won the 2025 Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest sponsored by Choeofpleirn Press.
