Christina

Second-Place Poem
1974 Relief Society-Ensign Writing Contest

Christina, Grandpa’s sister and his gauge
Of girl and womanhood throughout his years,
Left Aalborg’s streets to walk the restless deck
Of the stout Jessie Munn;
Measured the wagon ruts from Omaha
Through plain and mountain pass to valley floor,
And left for us no comment save a terse,
“They let me ride two afternoons—
I was too sick to walk.”
Gleaned in the fields of Sessions Settlement,
Teen hands beside her mother’s seamstress hands;
Could vouch for her own honesty in terms
Of stoic turning from a hoecake cooling
Upon a neighbor’s chair,
The cabin door ajar, and no one home …
A hoecake left intact when she had gone,
Still starving, and her errand incomplete.
Christina, proud to stand as second wife
To him her early blessing had foretold,
A husband like to Nathan, whose rebuke
And admonitions chided Israel’s king.
Christina weeping, and the dying words
The weary first wife speaks, “Don’t cry, Christina;
Don’t cry; we’ll be together soon again.”
These were her pride: the walk, the hoecake left,
The Nathan-mate, the dying first wife’s love.