Barbed : Then and Now      

           (‘ homo homini lupus’: Plautus)

Elsa Johnson

 It was Acanthus mollis that found its soft

voluptuous way a-top the severe slim

columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus

that took six hundred years to build and was

 finished (at last) only to endure intact a single

century before being reduced to a stockpile of

marble construction blocks   Those columns needed

spikes : A. spinosus – each lurid leaf and flower

 armored   Walking past it several times each day

I think …surely a plant for a feral culture :

barbed – as in barbarian   What use sweet reason

when the wolves sweep down ? …howling   death

 death  death   (yours – not theirs)  …destruction

singing through their veins …their shining eyes

In Connecticut

Elsa Johnson

Above the beach at Hammonasset a whirl of

many swallows circled just below where clouds

formed flat-bottomed as though resting on

a surface we could not see :  piling up

billowing above into the hued sky   Just there

was where the swallows flew their continuous

rotation    The water … was New England cold…

we lingered only an hour   When we left

the swallows still winged and swirled   sustained

by what…  …we could not see   Early evening

on my son’s front porch   we watched two quarrel

some hummingbirds visit the feeder    High — high

above —  a clearly modeled three dimensional

moon hung waxing in a still bright sky

Is It Ripe Yet?

Ann McCulloh

A sensory investigation

Thump a melon for its sound

Feel the cabbage fill and round

Sniff the peach for its perfume

Rub the grape, dispel its bloom

Heft a gourd and tug it loose

Bite the apple, savor juice…

_Ann McCulloh 2010

Elsa Johnson

I say grace is where you find it   …sometimes

in such unexpected places   Amazing

that the fleas hoping to camp on Loki’s face

moved him to try to talk like a bird   There he sat

high up in a flea-less open second floor window

opposite a wire where a robin perched and chirped   

and he chirped back   or tried to   Such strange

sounds coming from a cat I did not at first hear

attempted conversation    only slowly perceived

each single syllable birdcall met by ‘erk!’ from cat

…and then… later —  at day’s end —  in the garden

when the light changed   infusing all with gold   

the blue sky deepened   and the clouds glowed back

like one of those Renaissance paintings …like grace 

To Seamus Heaney in Heaven

                      after ‘The Peninsula’

Sometimes, when you have nothing to say, it is because

water and ground in their extremity

swallow the words before they leave your mouth.

They’re in the dark again and will never arrive.

The sky road is like that.  The road round the peninsula

rides toward a drunken sea and sky.

There is no horizon. The sky and the glazed sea meld.

The whitewashed gabled cottage you mentioned

is there at the point where all things merge and marry,

a compass for swallowed words. 

It is as you said – the sea, and the islands riding the sea,

except there is no fog.  This is Green Ireland

on a Best Day.  Looking back, there is the ground rising,

and the road riding up the grassed hill,

a landscape clean in its own shape,

that holds the code to all landscapes.

Sometimes, when you still have nothing to say,

after a long drive round a peninsula,

it is because water and ground in their extremity

have swallowed worlds.      

After my work-crew teens went home I stayed at

the bridge indulging my perfectionist tendencies 

scraping the last of the moss and woody weeds

from the stone’s joints  … and so discovered tucked

within a crack a tiny ring-necked snake   pencil slim   

perfect in its neat grey skin    Minutes later riled

yellow-jackets swarmed from a hole   stinging through

my gloves   my clothes  …and chased me from the bridge   

They could not be allowed to live where people pass so

close each day  …but later I thought…  is the wasp less

perfect then the snake …are not all nature’s children

innocents   living obedient to their calling… ?  Each day

begins without fanfare    is engaged unsuspecting    not

knowing when the turn will come  …if there will be one

Thrummmm     !

announces he’s calling

He’s hovering thin air

in front of me     wings

a-blurr

          appraising

                        my red shirt

for possibility as some

outrageous flower

thrummmm     !

he’s coming

             he’s going     

      pulled here

                          pulled there    

wings a-blurr    drawn

to beyond

violet     the to-me-merely

red trumpets of

crocosmia

His own trumpet

probes

magnet  to  magnet

Thrummmm     !