Poetry
by Karen G. Johnston
Not
Yet Gone
Today I place my wrinkled palm
on my daughter's shirted back.
She's dressed in soccer garb,
matching-green everything
adorning a nearly thirteen-year-old body
moving with enviable verve.
My hand passes smoothly
as I stroke her back.
I notice something --
not the thing already gone,
but the thing before
imminent absence:
No undergarment
as sartorial speed bump
to my finger circles of delight
along her shoulder blades.
That day will come:
Gone flat chest.
Gone smoothed fabric.
Gone baby-mine.
So many days
pass unheeded,
but not today.
Today is not
one of those days.
Today is a day
not yet gone.
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Ode
to Otis
Such joy, beholding this creature
attempting to scale river rocks
without success, yet he is not
one bit discouraged.
He and I have known
each other only
seven weeks now.
At first he found
all the gaps in our old
wire fence and he ran.
Ran he did,
just five days after we
brought him home from the shelter.
I spent a long hour in despair of his return.
Return he did, and now he runs less often.
We have repaired most of the escape routes,
but clearly not yet all.
Still he does not often run away,
he just lies in the fall sun, content.
This morning, Indian summer full upon us,
we walk along the pristine gorge.
Despite the sign's order otherwise,
I have taken off the leash.
His harness and collar jingle ~
he is by no means a wild thing,
this boy who craves my love ~
but he chooses his own direction.
Much to my delight,
it is always
the same as mine.
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Bridge
of the Gods
WPA-sculpted guardrails, tunnels built
of dustbowl sweat,
highway designed to "not mar what God had put there."
Memories of that road are dusted with family stories.
My favorite: Indian origin story of the Bridge of the Gods:
Two male mountains fought
for the attention of beautiful female mountain.
Their conflict erupted into hurled rocks,
creating a bridge of stones
that crossed the mighty river.
Mt. St. Helens joined the winner, Mt. Adams,
on the North side of the river,
leaving Mt. Hood defeated and alone.
Just the other night, curiosity piqued
by some random image unbidden from my past,
I googled old Route 30 and Columbia Gorge.
Turns out the story is either
mis-remembered now or mistold then.
St. Helens was
no victor's spoils,
but a spirit
rewarded for loyalty,
turned into
most beautiful
of all mountains.
In my childhood's version,
the mountains held
European names, not
Wy'east
Klickitat
Multnomah.
Names familiar to me,
but as my mother's high school
or amazing waterfall
in whose mist I bathed,
my six-year-old self believing
it existed only for me.
Daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter
of victors who wrote History, I wonder
what else is lost,
given another name,
remembered through erasure?
What other six year olds lay claim
to what does not belong solely to them?
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Karen G. Johnston is a social
worker by vocation, poet by avocation, socialist by inclination,
Unitarian-Universalist-with-Buddhist-tendencies by association,
lay preacher by gift, and mother by choice. She grew up in the
Pacific Northwest and now makes her home in Western Massachusetts.
Her written work has appeared in Red Weather, Silkworm, Equinox,
The Naugatuck River Review, and Women. Period: An Anthology of
Writings on Menstruation (SpinstersInk, 2008).
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