December 28, 2021

Bob Johnston

VANISHMENTS

The art of losing isn’t hard to master
—Elizabeth Bishop

Mysterious disappearance is the official name that means insurance will refuse to pay
for vanished statuettes or diamond rings or the ordinary daily loss of keys and pens
and checkbook and glasses but these vanishments are not really all that mysterious
since matter is mostly empty space and any slight relaxation of the binding force
will disperse the electrons as a cloud and nuclei as dust that settles out of sight
but when yesterday disappeared the vanishment was much more noteworthy
for even if yesterday was not too memorable it was still twenty-four hours
and its disappearance gave a faint plop as air rushed in to fill the vacuum
then a whole year vanished namely 1976 with many events probably
then everything since 1928 leaving only some childhood memories
and the routine of daily life continued as if there were still a past
with eating sleeping laundry shopping rambling conversations
with people who were still here but they sometimes dimmed
and scenes that faded out like mirages or maybe ghosts
of years of long ago or now or years not yet to come
while man and all his works have passed from view
and the landscape once full of streams and trees
is barren and the horizon narrows and now
the sun disappears and then
the moon and stars
and I am alone
on high mesa
naked
afraid

from Rattle #15, Summer 2001

__________

Bob Johnston: “The poetry they taught us in school convinced me that this stuff was for wimps, weirdos, and girls. It took me fifty years to see the light, and I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since. At least I know now what I want to be when I grow up.” (web)

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June 20, 2017

Bob Johnston

DOUBLE HELIX

The road leads downward, away from reality,
a giant ramp for a parking garage,
a bobsled run packed with snow,
turns unreasonably banked,
an infinite spiral.
The road to hell is paved

The transcendent bobsled skids
onto a frigid plain covered with six feet of snow,
an Eskimo hell.
A stranger in a strange

The city is laid out in neat icy squares,
unpopulated on this Saturday night.
All the fantastic citizens have gone to the mall,
the center of everything bright and beautiful,
three miles across, yellow and red brick,
snack bars, kiosks, stores, rest rooms,
but no exits.
All that glitters is not

Each rest room is four-dimensional,
an intricately coiled inner ear that leads back
to the beginning. Pollution slithers
from the snack bars onto the store fronts,
a gigantic two-dimensional movie set
populated by extras with frozen feet
and nondimensional faces.
Let the dead bury

At the very center of the mall, an iron staircase
spirals upward into the fog, a trail
back to reality. But the staircase is not
miraculous: At first touch it crumbles
into a heap of red rust.
Let my people

from Rattle #17, Summer 2002

__________

Bob Johnston: “The poetry they taught us in school convinced me that this stuff was for wimps, weirdos, and girls. It took me fifty years to see the light, and I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since. At least I know now what I want to be when I grow up.” (web)

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May 27, 2014

Bob Johnston

HAZEL, SOUTH DAKOTA

I

Just before sunset on the first day of May
a small breeze came down from the hills,
loitered in my back yard until dark,
then vanished, leaving behind
a faint aroma, a strange sweetness
with a message to me
from somewhere.

By September I’d forgotten the message,
or maybe I never understood it,
or maybe there was no message at all—
but something had lodged in my head
like a splinter just below the surface,
and I knew I had to go back
somewhere.

II

The house was just as I remembered it—
Small, white, with a peaked roof; front porch,
tiny lawn, back yard grown up to weeds,
wild plum trees, vines weighting down the fence.
Everything was there, frozen in time
for fifty years, waiting for me
to return.

Dusty street, cracked sidewalk,
chicken coop, outhouse,
rusty car up on blocks,
rock pile, plowed field.
Everything was there, except
the row of Russian olive trees,
vanished.

III

The room was waxed and polished,
ready for my first day of school.
Sunlight traced a pattern on the desks,
reflected onto the blackboards

and the map of the United States
and the Palmer Method alphabet
that circled the room.

I inhaled the odor of blackboards,
old chalk dust and new furniture polish.
An American flag stood in one corner.
The ancient plumbing gave off soft gurgles.
Two flies blundered against a windowpane
in perfect rhythm with the beat of the clock
we called Big Ben.

Fifty years hadn’t changed anything,
not even my beautiful red-haired teacher.
She sat at her desk, disembodied,
floating beneath a halo of sunlight,
book open, ready to read us a story.
I called out “Miss Hennessy,” and she smiled
as she disappeared.

IV

I headed west, homeward bound.

The Russian olives are blooming again,
and their strange aroma drifts down the canyon.
Finally, I know why I went back
to make the connection, to understand
the thread that binds me to the past,
to whenever it all began,
wherever.

from Rattle #20, Winter 2003

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May 11, 2011

Bob Johnston

FINISHED SYMPHONY

My first twenty years I’d never heard an honest-to-God
live symphony, and then I started at the top:
Koussevitsky and his Boston combo,
Carnegie, Wolfgang’s G minor.
When those first notes hit, they lifted me out of my seat,
floated me somewhere above the proscenium,
where I stayed for the next two weeks.
I can still hear those notes.

The slow movement was from Brahms. The violins spun it out
into a single white filament that looped over my head
and back to the stage. I tried to hold onto it,
but it slipped through my fingers.

Instead of a minuet we had Ellington. This was early Ellington,
before he got delusions of grandeur. The mood was indigo
and the stage rocked in rhythm while the brass growled,
the A-train rumbled under the auditorium
and I danced in the aisle
until they put me out.

The last movement capped the climax with Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.
Naturally, it was too loud, too long, and out of tune. The violins
begged for mercy, and the concertmaster took a swig of water
or possibly gin. The notes heaped up in weary piles,
waiting for the final
molto ritardando.

It ended, with no applause and no encores. The audience was long gone.
I sat alone in the darkened hall, waiting for the lights to come up.
They never did. The conductor disappeared in a puff of smoke
and the weary musicians filed offstage. I clapped and clapped
for an encore, anything
to break the silence.

from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
Tribute to the Greatest Generation

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November 29, 2010

Bob Johnston

WAITING

It didn’t rain all summer, and the wind
Blew yellow dust from Colorado, mixed
With black dirt of our own. Tumbleweeds
And dust had buried all the fences. The taste
Of blackness was always in my throat, and grit
Was in my bed. Toward the end of the day
We sat and watched the devils march across
A dirty sunset. There wasn’t much to do—
The crops were burned and all the cows had died.
My father said that next week it would rain
Because the Lord would send it. In the north
Dry lightning flashed against a black curtain.

from Rattle #23, Spring 2005

__________

Bob Johnston: “Eighty-plus years of memories have provided the fuel for many poems. ‘Waiting’ came from a South Dakota farm in 1931, the last year of the Dust Bowl. While remembering, I try to keep one eye on the future—to give me a reason for continuing to write.”

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