Category Archives: POETRY

Eleven Verses on the Value of Snakes

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Each year   her shed skin                   draped the rafters   of the barn
tissue of small scales        over-lapping         fragile              strange
in the hands                                        mottled discard of milk snake

 

In my dream          they came from the northwest            diagonally
past the corner of the house   :   solid fabric of snake                  red
and black            striped             side by side                    undulating
packed tight                        roiling                             around my feet

Photo by Heather Risher

Horses grazed at pasture         In the cropped grass          blue black
racer                slimness          slipping by           We  —  bare legged
clutch of summer   —    whooping !    keeping-up        down the hill
down to the swamp where        anticlimactically             he was lost

 

Coiled         lying by the track to the backfields                 crops left
woods right        —        black snake                           thick as a girl’s
arm          as imagination         long               I jumped  each time he
broke for the woods               across the track                      the thrill
undiminished                  when I startled him              he startled me

Photo by Annika Peloski

Raspberry canes     growing high    twined    among the branches of
the small tree    fruit above eye level              me     reaching for red
jewel of sweetness       grasping        instead      small head of snake
eyes open wide       mouth to the berry           not expecting    hands
when I startled it           it startled me                  no one ate the fruit

 

The trapped water    seeped from the quarry walls         along edges
lay           water snakes            somnolent seeming                 hidden
but       ready to slide water-ward        or bite                edgy reptiles
thick as a girl’s arm                          silent     as mental       ululation

 

Hoop snakes were real    the old timer said    in her youth   she saw
them     down    in the fields   by the swamp     where    if they were
startled      they put their tails     in their  mouths     and rolled away

 

That summer    when I was fourteen         I went to a camp    where
one child       not me     sat on a rattlesnake                                   he
startled it                                                                                    It bit

Photo by Gretchen Henninger

In the deep woods   one fall              my adult life   falling about me
like leaves       like the thick leaves underfoot                 stepping on
what’s that !                  …..she    slow from the cold     the torpor of
cold    dark    mottled leaves                a bit small   dark perhaps for
copperhead      thick      not slim like racer           not like milksnake
Too cold to bite          to slow to startle     —     (much)     —     adieu

 

I live in the city now   I do not see snakes       except    occasionally
a dead one     lying flat      drying        on hot asphalt       in the park
squashed by a bike tire       by someone        too slow to swerve   or
perhaps not seeing    value    in snakes      perhaps enjoying       that

 

This summer        working out in the country         that isn’t country
that is      lawns        mower hungry         circling             big houses
I     at peace     planting       focused on flowers               stepped on
something writhing     round under foot               It is she  — ancient
Goddess of Startle     blooming      her sleek skin bright       not like
I saw it              left              discard            draped           in the barn

Photo by Heather Risher

Gardenopolis Events

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST, PRESERVATION

Next week brings two events that might be of interest to Gardenopolis readers.

On Saturday, April 14 at 10 am at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Jim Bissell will share “Seed Banking Stories from the Museum Herbarium” with the Kirtlandia Society. Coffee and Conversation begins at 9:30 am. All are welcome, and admission is free.

Our own Elsa Johnson is the featured reader at Art on Madison for the POETRY + reading series on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at 7:30 pm. The aim of this reading series is to shine the spotlight on a single writer, providing them with the platform and time necessary to present a body of work and to connect with their audience. The doors open at 7:00 pm. POETRY + is free and open to the public.

Wither are we bound?

PASSION, PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

A week ago I went to the Natural History Museum to listen to the speakers at the Ohio Natural History Conference  — all of them good and interesting talks (confession; I was tired and slept through two of the afternoon talks; I hope I didn’t snore). They were all short and sweet (20 minutes each), about the relevance and importance of natural history and the natural world, and about the specifics of our changing world, the resilience of it — or not. All of this is just lead in to a lead in; I was much taken with gab-gifted naturalist Harvey Webster’s title for his lead-off talk: “Whither natural history?” and his confession that he had always wanted to use the word ‘whither’ – and now he had. 

Whither. An interesting word, archaic sounding and poetical.  Whither; meaning ‘where’, as in ‘where are we bound?’ That was the context of Harvey Webster’s question about natural history and the natural world. On a planet with a changing, volatile climate, in an age of extinctions and endangered species and at-risk environments, and I include our own built environment in that — whither are we bound?

There is another whither, spelled differently, but spoken the same; it is whither’s homo-phonic sibling, wither, meaning to become dry and shriveled, to decline or decay. Which seems to be one potential answer or result at the tail end of ‘whither are we bound.’ And when I go there, I am close to despair for what we have lost and must surely lose, and I grieve in premonition of the losses yet to come that I cannot even imagine. That’s when I write poems like this:

A Prayer from the Prayer Adverse

How close despair               and prayer                    lie down in bed

born of the same love                and            through the same eyes

see   both fore   and aft                :               that squirrel offers sun

flowers to feathered gods           :                that locust sheds tears

as leaves          :              how mute swan swims         in now murky

meres     and the strangled oak dies    gleaned                  Through

the same eyes       —        those hidden eyes         —           they see

Whither the wild crane     and whippoorwill?                          seals

Sadness to silence                                        and tightens the throat

Despair       inarticulate                   ends all                                  Yet

through those eyes               those hidden eyes             there may

still come a lightening      :        a prayer        —       un-glossed     —

if an un-glossed prayer may   hope                                         For all

that I love                                                   some slight    brightening

But that is not, actually, whither I am bound today, and so, having gotten both the w(h)ithers out of the way, time to refloat this raft. 

These last mild days have drawn me out into the ‘wilds’ of Forest Hill Park, into the valley, especially the short section where the Dugway Brook flows free in its original channel of layered eroded shales. At the south end, its ‘source’, it pours out of an enormous pipe (large enough to drive a small car into), then flows north for perhaps a quarter of a mile, or less, where it disappears, again, into another monster maw. Here one might well ask of it, ‘whither are you bound?’– for it now disappears again, goes underground into an artificial, and killing, concrete channel, and stays buried thus until it reaches Lake Erie at the eastern edge of Bratenahl, where it at last flows free again, out into Lake Erie.

This short distance free to the air is not enough to restore the stream to life. Before it reaches this unfettered stretch it flows buried under Cain Park, emerges briefly by the swimming pool by Cumberland Park, then goes back underground by the Community Center to emerge again, briefly, for this short free stretch in Forest Hill Park. It is a dead stream. Nothing lives in it. But, in this short stretch of its freedom, it is still beautiful. And when I look at it as I walk by it, I wonder what this area was like when my mother and her father hiked these woods and brooks (the Doan and the Dugway) when they moved here in 1920. I like to think that someday, perhaps, the buried section in Forest Hill Park might be freed, re-aired, re-enlivened — and also, all that is now underground between East Cleveland and Lake Erie, providing again a living life-line for life, and the life of the spirit.

Lois Rose, Gardenopolis-Cleveland co-editor, writes of this little stretch of free flowing stream: “I remember the first time I ever walked the stream bed – I could not believe my eyes. It was like a fairy tale — you stepped out of the parking lot and you were in the country on a stream bed, hidden from view, alone. There is a sense of secrecy. You hardly ever see anyone on it. You do not even know this exists, even though you live a mile away. It’s by the Rec center – yet very far from it. I have a sense of pride in that stream. I appreciate how sad and less-than-it-could-be  the stream is – but it has brought me a lot of pleasure over the years.”   

And so it has me, also.

Twenty years ago I visited a place in Ireland called Glendalough, a monastic site of some antiquity (6th century). We hiked up into the bracken covered hills there, following a little rollicking brook through its self-carved cloven bed in the rock. Somehow our poor diminished Dugway manages to remind me of that tannen-saturated jewel, both of them with their cascades and rills, and narrow congested places where the water runs fast — leading me to hope that in some future that I probably will not see, some future wisdom and largess will once again set the Dugway free.

I leave you with one more poem, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is a better one than my own, in the same way that the stream it describes, flowing into Lough Lomond in Scotland, is a far better brook than our loved but poor and limping Dugway.

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left.

Oh let them be left, wildness and wet

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Holding Pattern

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

Last night’s late season storm     pummeled     the Norway spruce     

as if wind’s huge fist                                    held him by the scruff                

and wrung   and wracked him                 All his long lovely limbs     

flailed      at the blows              In quiet times    each black branch 

descends through curves      or lifts              Each dark descending

bough           or branchlet                  scrolls     calligraphy     upon

the sky                                       One day  soon                 or distant      

wind will break him         —        but today?           He is the master      

of the comma                  the pause                      the pendant swish

Meditations at the Winter Solstice

PASSION, PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson

I

Night comes early        this time of year             Short twilight

days          fade to dull   washed over dim                  northeast

Ohio winter days                                      edged to collapse   — 

dark         into deeper darkness                           Entire days of

not-day-not-night          almost-but-not-quite            gloaming

Solstice    in a few short days                                  Not a good

climate for   New Grange effect                                   The sun  

so rarely shines                            one would not think to build

a long      cold       slot of stone                        for sun to creep

up    and back down   again             One might wait years    —

How many                  millennium                        would it take

to connect                cause and effect                in this climate?    

Brighter gloaming on   snow-glow nights                   Brighter             

nights than days                                   when snow is grounded

II

When I was young             I stacked my skis          outside my

door       strapped them on       on winter nights            floated     

almost       soundless      past blackened woods     and     fields

gleaming       bright      in darkness                 (hint of borealis

in blue-black sky)    But these days      creep     to Solstice  —

to beyond                               when     we begin to look for  —

notice     hope     for                       the almost     imperceptible

lengthening      of curtailed light                          toward larger

hours                  The bulk of winter looms ahead             cold

and beautiful                                   but someone has to shovel

walk    and drive         —        at this age one feels     once     is

enough         :        Lake effect weather          dark       to aging

bones               that wish to strap on skis        and flee        fear

less           into wild and quiet         snow-stunned          nights

Happy Halloween from Gardenopolis Cleveland!

PERTINENT, POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

poem and images by Elsa Johnson

To celebrate the holiday, we have a poem and some pictures of local yard decorations.

Vulture on the World Tree

It was         new territory to us                                                     We

rode the air currents to get there                                    up-drafts

We spread our wings out        wide                          the tips tilted

up      the wind    riffling    through them          There were three

of us         circling               We smelled dead things           We eat

dead things          The scent of dead things travels              When

we catch          that           smell                    we will fly a long way

A meal should be dead        but not ripe  :                     You need

presence in the land of the dead                                  You need a

tree       that stands alone                    You need to see what else

is out there    in that land                            We can clear a corpse

in a couple hours        —        thorough        —       we don’t notice 

what it is                                                     If you have a dead thing

to get rid of                                             you can do worse than us

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Of Birds and Bugs and Trees

POETRY, POPULAR INTEREST

by Elsa Johnson and Tom Gibson

A few years back I was cruising on Facebook and ran across a posting that showed a humming bird gripped in a praying mantises’ claws. They looked about the same size and it wasn’t clear the mantis was going to win a meal. Reading further in that posting I discovered it turned out that the hummingbird got away – that time. But that image stuck in my mind, and so one day I sat down and wrote a poem about it.

Lady Mantis Prays Before Lunch

Dear Lord                       I am devout          about            devouring

Every day          I raise my arms         and pray            —         claws

clenched tight         —        please    send me      something bright

and beautiful       to bite                                        I am no different

than the stealing fox            or soaring kite                       Send me

red twig gossamer                        —                     a dainty damselfly

in flight                                   I’ve heard   she  is a mighty huntress

too          —         though     I do not understand         her weapons

Dear Lord                                     how much      better       beautiful

tastes to bite                                     Just yesterday           as I clung

to a branch                     one bright     bejeweled     hummingbird

flew by and           snap !              oh!         the joy       of the green

struggle !                —              I held him for a long      long      time

feeling the heat of his heart                                   We both prayed

Then very recently my co-editor Tom Gibson sent me a link to a story that tells how some praying mantises routinely prey on hummingbirds, complete with pictures of the gruesome feast. I include that link here. Perhaps it is time to think about where we hang our hummingbird feeders that is nearly impossible for mantises to climb or jump to. Not this year, of course … the hummers are gone. I hope they missed the hurricanes.

 NYT article about praying mantises and hummingbirds

I miss their background chitter – one day it is there, omnipresent in the air, and then it’s not, and that’s how I first know they’ve flown. But every year there is one humming bird that lingers on for about another week after the others have flown south, and that little bird and a neighbors’ locust tree inspired another poem about humming birds. It anthropomorphizes the tree (oddly—not the hummingbird) which of course is a ‘no-no’, except I think it’s legitimate to look a something and try to imagine it’s inner life. I’ve never been particularly compliant about ‘no-s’ — why start now?

Black Locust     Missing Hummingbird

For two days she sat                                 and watched a swarm of

honeybees       lay waste her feeder                         golden bodies

fuzzed over its sticky surface                                 avid for syrup  —

while she perched                                           at the very top of me

chipping her feisty song of chitter                                         that all

summer long                   my leaf-ears      loved        to listen to   —

this time in such protest!                                  (and a long journey

ahead of her                    the ways deep                       the weather

unpredictable                                                        her kin       already

flown)                      Why  so many ? !            In the morning when

my heartwood woke          its         slow          fall          awakening

she’d flown                                            perhaps hungry because of

bees            My leaves grieve                  All around me        the air

is vacant                                              Only the hard of me endures

Then in the August of  2016 my street got hit particularly hard by the min-tornado or micro-burst that went through, which was especially damaging to the black locust trees – of which, on my street there are many, very old, very tall, and very brittle. And the locust that every year succored the last hummer before she left had its head struck off, allowing me to ‘see’ that loss through the eyes and heart of the hummingbird. A little over the top — it is, after all, a projection of my own feelings. We cannot really know what the hummingbird feels.

Hummingbird Missing Black Locust

He lost his head            you see              —            Soon after dark

when that    sudden     wind came through         like a smack

to the face                     He was there                  then he wasn’t

I did love him                      the way a bird       does        love

a tree                    sitting      way up       high      in his green

top-most branches                           chitting             about    how I

could see     everything     up there                                 my cousins

forever            fighting                                    over the stiff         red

nectar flowers                                 at that big blue nest    where

the two-legs live       across the street                                His head

cracked                            then fell                    crashing onto another

two-leg nest          shattering him            smashing that nest

awry                                    I think the two-legs miss him     too   

If he could grow another       head                           I wish he’d try

Be Here Now

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

What else              would one write               on a fairest day?

Yesterday      overhead                         the clouds flew by like

fluffed white dragons                strung out       horizontally —

battalions                no   –    legions !               lined up against

perfect blue                  Today’s heavens have changed three

times this last hour     —     wisps first         tattered         as if

breath ripped apart in some great battle         —             then

infinite           pale         and        totally        cloudless        sky

Now?         Dragon spawn                         Today is all sea rush

a constant in-rushing         wall          :        Sound    —     wave

upon wave       —         wearing away                 relentless and

without emotion                  Thus     what else can I say    but

Great Spirit               Dragon Breath             oh   cloud and air

let me be present        Here         :          Let me be           now

To Be Called   :   Testimony

BEAUTY, POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

I will speak now in other voices       :        whippoorwill        legend        saver of lost souls

haunting the wood’s edge in springtime                                calling the dusk moths home            

I will speak now in the voice of chipmunk              quicksilver             placer of sunflowers

seed-side-down                    offerings made                           for one more day’s safe grace

I will speak in the hawk’s voice         :        sharp-shinned huntress                          shrieker 

gifter of quick death         she of the ice-cold heart           the silent swift-moving shadow                         

and in the vulture’s voice          :          gleaner                  wing-rider                  wind-soarer                                                               whose presence is                                   the priesthood                                              of death

I will speak now in other voices       :       hummingbird chitter               high in the tops of

linear locust trees          :          small       writhen       ring-necked snakes                alarmed                               

loosened from sheltering stone          :         Yellow-jackets          that sting         and chase        

to sting again            and night-time horses           —          bolting         —              lightening

flares           —              thunder-claps                            and   I will speak for the un-wild deer                 

quiet-eyed                at the yard’s edge                             browsing the bushes without fear                                                             

I would speak for what does not speak     :     the  cruel devouring mantis      the delicate

damselfly she sometimes hunts           —          for bumblebees         butterflies          drunk 

in the milkweed         the goldenrod            —           all that multitude of            tiny insects        

buzzing flowers         :           in red crocosmia         sprawling                        purple pungent

oregano                           yellow-eyed blue buddleia                          crystal-crusted daylilies             

star-burst filaments of    cimicifuga                                                            and bee-glad phlox                                                   

I   too    will stand to speak for the wood drake            and for the still water on which he             

rests in beauty       For the great heron            the night heron              the ‘fisher’ flashing    

low     over the water          —       for the geese        drifting      among the reeds       the lily

pads        and for the strong-jawed turtle         waiting                                       lurking below   

                  

I will learn and speak the language of lichen                                         of grey-green filigree

coating stone                hiding time                      —                 the language of the aging oaks

riddled by borer        riven with wilt                 —                    I will learn the codes of worms

of microscopic mycorrhizal fungi           leaf mulch             and leaf mold              decay    —    

the language of           the mysterious complexity of dirt             duff           ruffled rhubarb        

and all that driven             erotic              unfurling of spring                                     new risen                               

out of the driven        luminous         dying         of fall                            I will speak for them

and  this voice too    :    ocean   :     least knowable           greatest of all              her words

of hush and sibilance      of susurration      that mystic speech          that echoes        down

our own chambered seas       words        of the wet world         that tell us                we live     

not          as we think         on our own terms            but helplessly           :          Hear that            

internal roar             Feel the great wave’s pull                the irresistible draw of its wash                     

its tremble        tumble        its untranslatable speech made up of        songs            of all

the large and lesser creatures of Sea             I will speak for them        :          sharp tooth

and finned tail      tentacle and gill          I will speak for what cannot speak      —      even

for that vastest whale         wrecked        broken       on the broad beach            by plastic

I will speak in other voices                                                                                 to bear witness

  

                       

How the Orgy Begins

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

Honeyberry leafed out    last night                                           Her pale

tiny flower buds are straining                         ( wait!   wait!       There

are no pollinators yet! )                                                    The first grey-

green buddlea leaves    uncurl —                                      Poking amid

half-digested leaf mold                                                    fragile carcass

of insect           :          possibly bumblebee            :           and    there

a scant handful of                                                    ultra violet     irises

while here               the rhubarb                  in its red                 unfurl-

ing            —          so      almost     obscene           —           like a bright

vulva        aroused from dirt                                      Last year’s debris

shouts     —      take me!   ( away! )              while this year’s new life

claws   out of the ground                And the sparrows call    :   what? 

who?/ where?/ there!  —  Is it time? —  now! /now! / quick? / quick!