Christine Andersen - uncluttered

In a relentless, materialistic, and exhausted world, Poet Christine Andersen heralds an era of inward and outward simplification. The narrator of her poem “uncluttered” reveals aspirations toward purifying and simplifying one’s life and world around them, while also trimming the fat from the mysterious dark vaults within oneself. Christine told The Dewdrop, “‘uncluttered’ was inspired by my desire to live with the essential–to stop tripping over ‘stuff,’ meaning inner and outer clutter.”

uncluttered

I aspire to be uncluttered,
for my days to have empty shelves

I want to be one bowl, one spoon,
one pair of hiking boots

to be an hour of silence
before a bong shudders
in the primrose dawn

be the awakening in
white snow
on the path through the woods,
each flake a story
about the sky it fell from

carry their wisdom home

become the candle
in an open window
no breath can blow out

Christine Andersen

Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who spends many hours in the woods with her dogs and her pen and pad. Poetry writes itself outdoors. Her publications include the Comstock, Awakenings, Evening Street, Octillo and Gyroscope Reviews, The Dewdrop, Bluebird Word, Closed Eye Open, Slab, Her Words, Glimpse and Nervous Ghost, among others. I won the 2023 American Writers Review Poetry Contest.