CHRISTINA WARD - POEMS

Christina Ward is a poet and aspiring author working on her first book, a piece of literary, mainstream fiction. She is a columnist for the Observer News Enterprise newspaper. She earned her Bachelor of Science from Catawba College in Environmental Science, which greatly influences her work. She also studied creative writing and English at Catawba. Her poetry has been published in the Cameo literary magazine, the  Arrowhead literary magazine, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, and in Wolff Poetry Literary Magazine. She lives in rural North Carolina.olina with her family.

​Bluebirds in Late Winter

​Surprising blue spirits descend
transforming snow-covered fences.
They search the snow for pieces of Spring
to pull from sleepy ground.
They carve spaces in the sky
for her to enter.
 
Flashes of red tuck under as
Waxwings alight, all stern and masked
They pluck berries
Shift and bounce and disperse,
Leaving the bluebirds
To sing of Spring.

​Hoppy-Toads in the Summer

​Hoppy-toads grow fat
tucked behind cool gray
stones and fragments of brick.
A yellow bucket nestles
there, waiting.
 
Determined,
I take up my bucket
The white plastic handle
Digging into my arm.
I set out.
 
I lift each rock carefully
Disturbing the grass
Unveiling worm and cricket.
I search for them
In the cool, dark places.
 
The edge of the driveway
No stone unturned
But to no avail.
I set my eyes on the
Row of bricks beside our house.
 
Finally, a fat one leaps
But I am fast.
I scoop him up and
Plop! He squats into
The corner of my bucket.
 
Hoppy-toads like friends,
I think, and search for him
A mate. A companion.
The third brick hides her.
Plop! Into the bucket she goes.
 

​Salt

​I smell salt.
Like the salt left in seashell stomachs
that dries and sours
in the back of your car.
(Its dreams drying up in the absence of the sea...)
I know the sea will heal me,
shove new dreams
new thoughts
new truths
into my pores,
slam them into my eyes
and ears
until
all I know
is clarity, sweet sweet oblivion
to anything else.
Swallow me whole!
Faeries need not
fly forever,
I am tired.

​Horizon

​There is something
unquestionably strange
about the horizon,
always changing colors,
shifting its edges.
 
Someone is always
On the other side
Pulling it away.
 
If I am lucky the lily pads will
Welcome my soft steps,
The waters will yield to my weight,
The flowers will float aside
And I will grab your fingers
Before you vanish into the onward
Bending of night.
 
I wonder of a ball of fire…
An orb so great
No darkness could consume it,
Yet your belly swallows it whole every eve.