Cadences

Allan Johnston

The Sufis speak of the latent figure,

a sideways eight, infinity looping

back and forth from systole to

the depth of the heart.

This is a pattern,

a sign of the times, a sigh of no times,

a profession.

Outside

eternity continues habitual chatter

into presence, for or from

which we emerge in logarithms

of rapture or regret,

depending on the day.

Where the current of electron

moving may take us, ergo to

connections or what can be expressed

or perceived as problematics

unearths cracks. There is no release

or rehearsal of the alphabet

of events that speaks or spills

your life. You might

pick a moment and from there

construct eternity

out of coinciding boxes

of clothes or nakedness.

Either way, here we are.

Heavy Snow

Allan Johnston

Heavy snow breathes on into summer

in the pure flower opening its drift

and cool anthem to insects

each scent

some captured essence of the return

of winter.

Beyond the trees,

clouds too remember

the flower

form

their own designs.

Air defines them,

the illusion

of solidity,

the whiteness of cloud,

of snow, of flower.

Allan Johnston’s poems have been published in Poetry, Poetry East, Rhino, Tipton Poetry Journal, and over 60 other reviews. He is author of Tasks of Survival (Mellen, 1995), and a chapbook, Northport (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and has received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize nomination. From California, he earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis, and now teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He serves as a reader for the Illinois Emerging Poets competition and is president of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education. He has worked as a sheepherder, shakesplitter, roofer, forest fire fighter, Indian cook, and photographer, among other occupations.

Return