Dead, My Father

Part I
My life has been easier
in these two decades’ absence.
A calmer, quieter urgency
to understand all that he brought.

Part II
I spent much of December
anticipating the date.

Even the first days
of the new year
had it on my mind.

Yet today is the tenth.
The day came & went.
Slipped my notice.

Another indication
that I am a better
poet
worker
wanderer
activist
committee member
mother
sister
housekeeper
lover
prize fighter
dog walker
liar
speller
baker
candle stick maker.

Nearly anything
than daughter.


(cc) 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.



(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Perfect, Where I Am Not

My friend admires

her daughters' lithe bodies

while cursing her own,

all hip, belly, & thigh.

She remembers too well

how she once looked like them,

more twig than trunk.

Though there is grief when I behold

my daughter's burgeoning shape,

knowing I had nothing to do

with its creation,

I also feel relief.

It is not that I think her perfect,

where I am not.

I know acne will scar her.

Lack of symmetry will follow her.

Body hatred is female legacy

not even pure motherlove

can fully displace.

It is just so much easier

to love her flaws over my own.

Karen G. Johnston

New Same Grief

She does not yet

share my curves.

Nor will she ever.

Another woman’s bodystory

best guesses when first blood

will engorge, trickle, then seep.

She will wear the echo

of some other woman’s body.

Its reverberation is the one

that chimes my daughter’s bodyclock

of egg drop, of bud burst.

It is the new same grief.

Like when I couldn’t name her,

she who came to me

two days past two

and quite already

the whole of her given name.

It is the new same grief.

Like when I had to reply

I don’t know

What was my first word?

When did I learn to walk?

I don’t know how come

she couldn’t be a live-with mommy?

Blood. Bone. Body.

These bounded things

that wither away.

My solace –

large enough,

and more:

though body

may forever

be mystery,

not she.

Not her love.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Neither Does the Moon

Even after all this time, the sun does not say to the Earth, “You owe me.” (Hafiz)

It hangs low like it knows

the too much on my mind.

It just hangs til you notice,

then carries its own skyward rise.

The moon is accustomed to loss:

single ant immolated by magnifying glass

in the hands of a much too eager six-year old.

Whole anthills, colonies as tall above ground

as they are below, drowned with greedy poisons.

Fresh water pearls fall down drains.

Cheeks are slapped, lies told,

languages unspoken, music unsung

into memory’s deepest chasm.

The moon will wait.

Weeks, eras, epochs:

not an ounce of impatience,

its whole and partial sheen

expecting nothing in return.

No reciprocity, no pat on the back

for the gravity of such witness

found nowhere on earth.

There was a time my daughter would stop breathing,

six seconds at a clip, over and over, all the while asleep.

Did the moon ever wake her?

Re-rhythm her breathing

to properly oxygenate

her baby brain?

No, that was the surgeon,

who removed the obstruction

and in its place, an absence

that rings her voice with the sound of tin.

Still moonBuddha rises each night,

not waiting in the sky

but weighting the whole improbable thing:

equanimity repleting the ink heavens,

as I make of myself a light.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston

Swallows of San Juan Capistrano

“svalow, svalow”

Put both my children

into a room full of strangers,

they become swallows.

San Juan Capistrano?

Soon-to-be discovered adopted kids.

Some enigmatic knack,

reliable as March 19

at the old Spanish mission,

compels them home,

knowing each other

in unknowable ways.

They won’t twitter about

their common bond.

Like their parents might,

adopted kids won’t talk shop:

How old were you?

Domestic or international?

Open or closed?

Sometimes they find

the kind of kid

who is a salve of belonging,

a consolation against freakdom,

a companion on this long journey.

Other times,

it’s the sort who picks scabs,

rubs salt in, makes sure that

misery not only loves company,

but makes more for good measure.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston