Elena Johnson: Three Poems
Tallest Objects
Wildflowers one knuckle high.
Mammals the width of a hand
gather bouquets in their mouths,
pile them in havens between stones.
Each human gesture
weighted with layers of fleece and wool,
zippers and eider-down.
A kilometre above sea-level,
we are the tallest objects
bent by the wind.
Wide-legged gait
of researchers. The hunch
at day’s end, over the kitchen table
that is a series of planks.
On evenings that aren’t wind and rain,
we form a loose circle. Chew false tobacco,
spit it red onto the rocks
outside the cook-tent’s silvery dome.
View from Pika Creek
Three small figures hike slowly upstream,
bent forward with the weight of their packs.
From here, they seem
to move noiselessly –
the creek
lilts over the stones.
Map pointed toward the next valley
they begin to amble upward,
cloud-bound, over the scree.
Hiking Out
Pack on my back, poles in my hands,
quadruped.
Neoprened and water-proofed,
my boots soaked through.
Petal of a buttercup
pasted to one toe.
The first tall shrub
seems a caribou.
A sparrow rests in its antlers –
antlers that sway and dip.
By mid-day I’m loose-legged,
limbing down the spongy slope.
The white fox of fog
curls around me,
muffles the map.
Two sandpipers clear
the brook’s edge, where
I tilt my bottle in.
Elena E. Johnson’s first book of poetry will be published by Gaspereau Press in Spring, 2015. Her writing has been nominated for the CBC Literary Awards and the Alfred G. Bailey Prize. Her poetry has appeared in journals across Canada, including Arc and The Fiddlehead, as well as four anthologies. These three poems were written during her time as writer-in-residence at a remote Yukon research station, and will be included in her forthcoming book.
