Poetry by K.L. Johnston
The fisherman left his folding
chair under the oak in leafy
coolness where occasionally
it’s borrowed to mind the pond.
Content to view its mysteries,
passed by, to watch the young parents
with their daughter discovering
mud, laughing as she finds something
startling that splashes and flicks
away. They scoop her up, strolling
on unmindful of fingerprints
and red clay. They pass the dragon
elm that is far from home, but thrives,
happy to be surrounded by
the wild natives, cinnabar heart
visible through its shrinking bark
next to sycamores flaunting pale
green and white skins. At their dark roots
the bumblebee sits unmoving
on the swamp sunflower, so tired
by afternoon, with few blossoms
left unvisited, he sleeps on
in the acute angles of stem
and sun while pollen shimmers,
a dust of fantasies on the
waters of the pond where carp rise
up from green and purple shadows,
grazing in brilliance, uncaring.
Fierce, the kingfisher darts by blue
and shaded. Not the most brilliant
or the biggest or most deadly
of hunters unless you are small
and a fish! a fish, a fish.
K. L. Johnston‘s favorite subjects are whimsical, environmental and/or philosophical. Her poetry appears in journals ranging from Small Pond magazine in the 1980s to work recently appearing in Humana Obscura and Pangyrus. She is a contributor to the recently published anthology Botany of Gaia.
