Charis Lives

By Mary Eckhart

Charis has always shone with a bright luminance in my life. Something about her was beyond the rest of us. We were all bright and eager and quick but she was a poet. I felt all the world around her was measured and redefined through her poetic genius, her way of seeing the interiors of her and others’ lives more directly than we, then reconstructing that insight in images and language sure and subtle and breathtakingly beautiful.

She was slight of figure; even in a thick winter coat she was almost a waif. But always, her spirit of tremendous courage, her will to live deeply and strongly, was impressive and remarkable. She was gentle, humorous, brave, enduring, devoted to her family, spiritually alive.

Bill was her beloved; when she was with him, spoke of him, wrote of him, she glowed tenderly; she was magnificently strong with Bill beside her.

I think of her very often, imagining where she is, knowing she is experiencing endless poetic possibilities, meeting others like herself, recreating the world around her in language so beautiful that, in the words of her poem, “I can’t dream to name.” In memory and in her living poetry, Charis lives.