Caroline Johnson has two poetry chapbooks, Where the Street Ends and My Mother’s Artwork, and has more than 100 poems in print. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she won 1st place in the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row 2012 Poetry Contest. Her full-length collection, The Caregiver (May 2018, Holy Cow! Press) was inspired by years of family caregiving. Visit her at www.caroline-johnson.com.
The Garden of COVID
In your garden, getting lost
in lilac coneflowers, mingling
with the bees and hummers,
your grin another bloom.
I move out of the wilderness,
tall as a sunflower, turn to talk
to a stranger veiled with fear,
the pandemic always near.
I ache to see lipstick and balm,
teeth smooth, white, chipped,
stained, or even gapped,
a nose Roman or crooked.
I yearn for a bouquet of expression,
see smiles not hidden by cloth.
A native plant of spontaneous
laughter, growing in public soil.
Previously published in Friends Journal, 2020.
The Language of Love
“Without arts, the inner life would wither” — Mark Strand
Take three bus transfers anywhere.
Get off at the last possible spot.
Look around—you will be surrounded
by Chicago, but you won’t be lost.
Doubtless you will see Mark Strand
wandering State Street in an overcoat.
Maybe you see a thousand such poets,
falling from the sky like a Magritte painting.
Open your umbrella to protect your face
from their tears. Watch as their broken
legs and blood smears the sidewalk.
Step over their bodies.
Don’t steal their bowler hats.
Walk up to Strand and shake his hand.
Fan the inner flame of art—protect
your fragile and illuminated heart.
— Previously published in Two Cities Review and the Ekphrastic Review
Skiing
My mother skies like an Olympian,
diving down moguls of locked memories,
navigating knee replacements and broken bones.
When she fears she might hit a tree,
she makes angels in the powder, dodges
chronic arthritis with pain pills and lightning.
In the warming hut of her kitchen, she works
on jigsaw puzzles of kittens and blue sky while
sipping hot chocolate and nibbling donut holes.
Her shirt is red checked like the wallpaper
in her kitchen, and when she zips down each slope,
out of bounds, her hand-knit scarf tied
in an unreadable knot, she becomes a blur,
a French Impressionist dancer with a couple
of pieces missing, a potpourri, a broken mirror.
She stands up from her wheelchair clutching her cane—
a monogrammed rod, a wooden crutch, a tree branch,
an extended piece of willow, a bleached crow—
then plants it like a pole, attempting to descend
the stairs one more time, each icy step a flag of victory,
a fast blue slope, a thrilling dangerous carousel ride.
She carves her boots into the carpet like orthopedic
ornaments, slowly slides her patella, joints and femur,
her titanium knees, her aching shoulders, summoning
her courage, then points her skis towards the bottom
of the mountain—where the powder and ice await,
where we all will be someday—closes her eyes, and lets go.
Published in The Caregiver (Holy Cow! Press, 2018) and Lilipoh (Winter 2020)
Ladder
--after James Wright
The sun is shining
and spills onto the leaf-covered lawn
this late afternoon. The near empty trees,
gaunt like used toothpicks, foreshadow
winter and death. Outside the window I see
a green ladder leaning on the house like a sentinel
guarding the sun. Earlier, my husband had climbed
it, shaky like the autumn leaves littering
our gutter. He tried to empty the gutters,
but the ladder was not tall enough.
There is a trick to it. It is not rickety
and he did not fall, but still, like my cancer,
there was the fear.
A plane flies overhead, ferrying passengers
to the next life. I have wasted time
worrying about death and killing flies.
A dog barks from a nearby house.
At the end of the yard, a pipe pours
rainwater from our gutters into a muddy ravine.
I lean back onto the sofa, listen to the silence
and remind myself that he did not fall.
Published in 2018 Encore
Maple Lake: A Sestina
Walking on frosted landscape, we hike alone.
The crisp January air melts our bones
as we make our descent to Maple Lake
with sunshine and tracks in the snow.
Slowly we reach the river of ice
now covering a home of native fish.
Even in winter men search here for fish.
Despite storms, they are not alone,
drilling holes and auguring through ice,
huddling in small shacks to warm their bones.
They sit and smoke and watch the snow
softly stroke its print onto the lake.
I follow you out onto the lake,
thinking of how young boys catch fish
here in May and June, and how the snow
keeps falling, each flake wet and alone.
I wonder if bluegill have cold bones
as they swim below the ice.
I take a step onto the ice
now covering frozen Maple Lake;
the wind seeps through my bones.
I think of what happens to the fish
when winter comes and water alone
is not enough to fight the snow.
You begin to skate on top of the snow
and leave your skid marks on the ice.
I turn north and leave you alone,
looking out upon the frozen lake,
a deserted moonscape except for the fish
which turn inward, embracing their bones.
Who knows how deeply it goes to the bones,
when skin starts to wrinkle and hair to snow,
and men grow wisdom as they begin to fish,
balancing each moment on bright skim ice,
hovering between reality and myth, the lake
a reminder of each lifetime alone.
Yet we are not alone; nature calls our bones
back from the lake; we listen to the snow
and petrified ice. Beneath us swim the fish.
This poem won 1st place in the 2012 Chicago Tribune Printers Row Poetry Contest and was published in the Chicago Tribune. It also won 3rd place in the Formal Category in the 2008 Chicagoland Poets and Patrons Contest.
Caroline Johnson