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Poems by Jeffrey Johnson
Late Fall The white of an apple turned into air is the transparent thin-place of autumn. Children can smell it in wind off the lake when lawns, iced over lively with winter refracted into scattered and spread splints of silver and green, reflect autumn’s end, compacted, wrapped and polished in apples full of winter’s refinement of fruit flesh and seeds into fire strung through branches of conifers: star threaded, moon-beam draped, clasped in silver for her hands and her hair. Blessed Assurance In the lobby, with our hair combed and our hands washed, we’re ready for our matinee performance. Later, with our eyes wide and our legs colt-fresh, we’ll step out lively into rainwash that splashes streetlight shining and headlight beams to the star-scoured moon-polished kettle Others, much like us, will follow, dressed in their best clothes, shoes polished, to fill this waiting room again. Summer News I saw Satan fall like lightning on a pocked and twisting rooster. The evening sky was bruised and roiled as God came booting, panting, hunting, pelting good green corn with shotgun hail. God must have aimed a shot above Jesky’s barn, that’s when I saw Satan fall like lightning from the storm-slate sky. Others saw great rolling balls of red and orange, or so they said they saw this fire, when (crack and sizzle) down he sailed, in the downpour, through the hay mow, landing on a splintered feed trough, sprinkling sparks to straw as stiff and ready as the matches from a box.
Copyright © 2006 by Jeffrey Johnson. All rights reserved. This page published July 2006.
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