Jenny's Poems
Jenny has written 2 books of poetry:
The Wisdom Tree, Salzburg University Press, 1993, 245pp, ISBN 3-7052-0626-5
Neptune’s Daughters, Expansions Unlimited Press, 1999, 45pp, ISBN 1-900410-05-2
She is grateful to all those who have encouraged her - especially the poet Fred Beake. Many of the poems are surreal, some drawn directly from dream imagery: others capture the spirit of a person or place. Influences include Hebridean song, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath.
Poetry Salzburg is an English language poetry press, originally founded by James Hogg in 1971 as the University of Salzburg Press.
• Uncollected poems:
Idyllwild, California / Wester Ross / Triassic Coast / Shanklin Rain
• Poems from The Wisdom Tree:
Derelict / Song Circle / The Cleansing / The Contentious Wife / William and Stella / The Nursery / Blacksop and Blue / Memoir / Peculiar Violet / Moat House, Olveston / East
• Poems from Neptune's Daughters:
Life Review / Art Deco, Miami Beach / Breaking Free / Neptune's Daughters / November 2nd / All Hallows / To a Young Girl
• Illustrated poems that appeared in the GreenSpirit journal:
Wind versus Sun / Beech Owl Barn / Perdita / Rapport / June / Marianne / Chinese Angelica / Whitby / Borderland
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA
In the moment between dreaming and waking,
the sky needs to be hidden,
the unbidden words furled:
in Idyllwild, a time long after the dream
is the time to begin.
Blue jay, robin and woodpecker
witness the dawn –
at one with the butterscotch tang of the pine-bark,
the chocolate bark of the manzanita.
By forest boulders on Mount San Jacinto,
raccoons, lizards, are keenly aware
of wolf, coyote,
mountain lion, black bear.
Now, words fly wild as disturbed feathers;
then swoop like an eagle
thru pure, bare sky.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
WESTER ROSS
Wherever I go, I sense mountains:
pyramids and paps
of sandstone, limestone and gneiss
replenish the psyche.
To watch is to touch.
Lochs live peacefully among them,
purple and turquoise: at Gairloch,
a great skua soars over the boat;
I see a cormorant, a harbour of porpoises;
a gray seal, almost asleep,
her head above the water.
On the horizon, Skye, Harris,
brighten and fade in a thin mist.
In Plockton, the lowest of rainbows
grazes Loch Carron;
the sun turns theatrical,
illuminating a tiny island.
Near the Pass of the Cattle,
Highland cows and Jacob ewes
are unfazed by the passing car –
or by any invader, past or present.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
TRIASSIC COAST
Midsummer Day, two thousand and three:
east Devon light on the chicks of kittiwakes,
on cormorants and shags,
on the rust-red Triassic stacks
of Ladram Bay.
A peregrine falcon responds
to the focusing of eyes:
flies niftily from her cliff-nest
to circle the boats.
On Budleigh Salterton pebbles,
naturists lie in a breezy sun:
on the moist sand at Orcombe Point –
the coast’s west end –
a kitesurfer takes to her heart
the energy of sky, of afternoon tidelines.
She keeps it for only a second:
she frees it, sending it
high above the water.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
SHANKLIN RAIN
All this July day, soft rain has soaked
my orange American cotton:
I have walked through a chine
that is like a subtropical biome.
Under the platform’s roof,
the station clock makes dripping sounds.
A small woman talks to herself on a painted bench
to assuage the loneliness –
her voice, like that of a radio broadcaster,
switched on and off … and on …
Behind us, a waiting-room is locked.
Outside, mist nets the east cliff;
while diesel and steam, with their different
rhythms and gauges,
take visitors, commuters, backwards and forwards
like a pendulum, a tide.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Reach
up to index
POEMS from THE WISDOM TREE
DERELICT
Haggard as November, he thirsts for the river.
How fast it winds! –
as though it were cleaning a secret wound
on the hip of the land.
And under the night’s untenanted sky,
he listens to the loosened –
to the wind-without-code on the birdless tree,
to the plummeting leaf, with its brief goodbye.
And he listens. And he listens to the chastened, the blanched.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
SONG CIRCLE
from A Year of Dreams
Make me your bairn, my laird of the looms,
for one is the weaver and one is the web,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Allow me a lull, my lullaby king,
for one is the crooner and one is the slumber,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Prepare me a cairn, my steward of stones,
for one is the craftsman and one is the crown,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE CLEANSING
from A Year of Dreams
She brought him a thimble of milk from his childhood,
her breath on its bony rim timid as down.
He chose her a chalice that steamed with her youth;
it boasted of bridles round wrathful brown heads.
Gold-soft he watched: he would win her.
She lent him a tankard of froth from his manhood.
Strong as wet ropes, he strode round its warmth.
He gave her an earthenware jug for her cleansing,
took – from her morning-cheek – crumbs of cold sleep,
slops of small tears.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE CONTENTIOUS WIFE
She arrives insufferably late.
Her visited husband tenses, reddens, listens:
her companion slackens….
Both of them are conscious of the concentrated hatred –
in her voice, in her eye.
Yet neither man turns violent:
through the willow-laced window comes abundant sweet light.
And then a youngster appears; who swings between the chair-arms:
wanting, wanting laughter.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
WILLIAM AND STELLA
While William the librarian hibernates,
while Stella, in wellingtons, gardens,
I make myself walk between rain-scented lines of deciduous trees –
trying, in vain, to ease the expanding mind into routine’s
narrow lanes.
Time and again I reflect upon yesterday’s dream –
when every archway, every porch that I approached
became too low….
William the librarian continuously sleeps,
judiciously nourished with words – which seem fluid things….
Stella, wisest among the latest wet blooms,
communes with what neither confines nor excludes.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE NURSERY
When I was thirteen,
when my mind hurt with Latin unseens and theorems,
when lunch-times became petty,
I would leave the classroom, hall, kitchen,
would climb past staff-room and green-room, and enter the nursery -
where the starched matron was unconcerned with analysis,
with academic fashion-shows.
I would lie on the ottoman, staring at the white paint
of cleansed cupboards, a glass of kaolin near my hand,
my throat constricted by the nameless phobia-in-charge.
Convalescents came and went: Fiona, with the magnolia
knee; Rosemary, light pirouetting in her eye.
I learnt to listen to the assistant, Olive Broomfield,
who talked about Ireland, her homeland: about mountains; moss;
tubercular blood…. Softly, I would acquaint her with my poems.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
BLACKSOP AND BLUE
Months previously, I had dreamed of such a place:
of prosaic arcades, and post-war colleges;
of unpopular markets, and angular council estates;
of correct pollards, in stale, sterile air….
Now one of my college tutors, a Dr David Blue,
whose outspokenness concealed great frailness,
had been appointed quite wrongly.
In most departments,
naďvety was trained to become spurious wisdom:
a jumble of girls would be sorted and sent to a host of schools –
only to learn common endurance.
Obviously unappreciated,
the doctor preferred an acquaintance with outcasts –
with a surrealistic world full of prophecy and curses….
Inexplicably, I knew he would finish abruptly –
would be the last of his mother’s three sons to predecease her:
Blacksop was a town where complacency masked violent ends –
where the flatness of the land constantly restrained.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
MEMOIR
Just when her father was drowning in the Avon,
Fiona MacPherson was cycling downhill.
I know because I saw her, still in her school gaberdine,
her blondness dressed in a crimson hood.
It was Friday afternoon: dog-walking time.
The morning papers were saturated with it:
the unmended railing, the learner-driver, the plunge into the river.
Mother left her cereal-bowl at once – to weep in the hall;
and all I could do, meanwhile, was fail to be less jealous
of a popular fourteen-year-old; an emulated beauty.
On Sunday, conditioned not to be too curious,
everyone else was discussing the news in whispers:
not only MacPherson’s accident – his discomfiting, first drama –
but also the change in his daughter; those elements of silence
which made her seem remote…. I resembled her less than ever.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
PECULIAR VIOLET
Today, knowing she is forbidden to look back,
the girl in plain worsted ignores that expressionless bus-queue;
but passes the darkening cathedral, the fountainless council-house
at the end of the straight, tall hill.
And approaching the university tower, the museum,
the resonant triangle of shops,
she chances upon an obscure chemist’s violet glass;
and pauses, conscious that this very glass
is linked to a peculiar enclosed past –
is as forbidden as the escapist’s queue.
Even in dreams she has willed herself to climb
rather than wait, than be taken:
time and again, nearing the zenith;
just once, glimpsing that distant valley
with its flawless colours and contours.
Day after day, night after night,
feeling both ecstasy and misery in her inmost globes –
she concentrates solely on her home-coming.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
MOAT HOUSE, OLVESTON
Near Thornbury Castle and Aust Ferry, there is first
Tockington, and then, Olveston. I approach the
long-forgotten familiarity of Church Lane:
its turns and gradients.
Over thirty years on, Moat House looks heavier,
rather than lighter. Its occupant answers the door:
Reginald Crouch; recently retired Methodist lay preacher;
ninety-three.
He does not know me, but recollects my late parents;
together, we remember his late wife, Daisy;
through her, I remember myself – my inner child:
I bring my stilted past into the doorway of the present.
Daisy, fresh as infancy, is imploring me to play more,
to put on shorter dresses; to be open-throated.
Moat House has an aroma of home-cooked meals,
floral soaps, pre-motorway hedgerows.
The place seems heavier now, like its owner: who slowly
uncovers his past; embraces his present – those visits from
middle-aged sons; grandchildren. Safe on his threshold,
safe within the frame of Methodism – he begins his goodbye.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
EAST
Early in February, the wind comes straight from Siberia –
bearing on its giant spine a fine snow.
Easterly is broader than northerly: it may clasp you to death.
Easterly is a bear: northerly is known for its
lupine tooth.
In Latvia and Lithuania, the people rise up with the wind:
thirty degrees of frost do not deter them.
Outer cold and inner heat meet within the
pains of a slow burning; an uncertain birth.
In the Middle East: war.
On English television, speculation camouflages
every insecurity.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
POEMS from NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTERS
LIFE REVIEW
A mother attempts to videophone her son:
because of one half-broken button,
nothing is to be seen.
However – fancying she hears the
whispering of companions – she tries again.
All of a sudden – visions begin:
in the first – the schoolboy of nine crouches in front of a
stage hearth: others in the class, it seems, are chosen for
drama-without-scars.
Mother, like son, is the unobserved observer.
In her vision of the six-year-old boy by the sea –
toying with a watch that she has given him – she catches herself
stealing it back; and passing it on….
recalling that north-east wind at the end of August,
she learns about his sense of unreality.
In a third vision – he turns into the baby in the grass:
becomes the imago; the six-pointed star….
When he jumps his wordless patterns into unlimited air,
she feels how he concentrates the wisdom
here and there; here and there.
At last, the videophone reveals him fully nineteen –
rejection pressed into withdrawn pupils:
beyond them – are signs of a dying star….
Finding its pulse – the mother begins to listen:
to respond in time.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
ART DECO, MIAMI BEACH
The New Year translucency remains within sea:
art deco turquoise.
The sky looks full of itself, with its
frequent metallic fowl.
Underneath it, young men lounge on chaises longues –
salt-clean; keen for uniformity.
Everywhere, there are pastels of purple, coral, jade.
The foreignness of Florida is stronger than that of
Italy, Germany: the language of English conceals
parallel rather than linked worlds.
People have an air of detachment:
a vocabulary of charm.
As I walk along the pearly beach,
my mood shifts: I begin depressed by the
absence of cliffs – of vitality in
tides and condominiums.
The rhythm in my hip – the afternoon light
laced with a wakening wind – pull me to the pier:
to the pelican’s poised beak and wing.
In a while – willing to connect – I focus on detail:
the Beth Jacob synagogue; the Wolfsonian Museum.
As six o’clock darkness falls, ocean-front hotels
line their aprons with premature loudness.
Puerto Ricans, Cubans, have opened bikini-thin shops.
At South Pointe, by a fitness circuit,
the elderly, orthodox Jews whisper.
The art of imitation – imitation of art? –
is as constant as in ancient Rome.
Americans pay homage to it in limousines –
or on Rollerblades.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
BREAKING FREE
Wherever she treads on those fringes of town
that encompasses her fear – there, it comes upon her;
and there: a mean, green shed;
gray-roofed; opaque-windowed;
its doors semi-ajar – like trappers’ arms.
Then, it is in her backyard: hard by the
washing-line, the play-square, the kitchen.
And then, it becomes the bedroom:
the narrowing, gray-green walls
pinching the dregs of childhood.
Whenever she hears his drunken steps on the stair,
she pretends to hide beneath blind blanket;
to cover her eyes with stiffening hands.
She attempts to scream at her lock-less door –
but the larynx goes cold….
Sick Mother lives on pilules and elixirs;
is enclosed in a world of sorrows kept hot;
of simmering denial.
Such helplessness binds her daughter as fast as
Father’s abuse. Night after night, she etches
“Liar! Guilty!” on the bruised heart….
Just once, looking in the glass, the girl acknowledges her
pair of wigs – blond basins trapping her
spring of hair: which she imagines
long as a wand, full as a curtain;
free …
freer than a mountain wind.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTERS
Dreamwalking on to the campus of my heart,
I am lost.
The heart cannot be honed like thought:
lessons to be learned are without timetables, indices.
Outside the iced wall that Neptune saltily eats,
the small town sells many maps, many clocks;
and I find my level way to the boundary
between town’s end and sea’s tumultuous start.
An ageless longboat – without sails, without oars –
is tossed to untimely dying by twilight’s violets and grays.
A second boat, alive with oarswomen,
glides into sudden sight by harbour walls….
My sister from over the water –
you have opened doors in a number of walls:
now, look into my campus-heart;
into my hushed brightness.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
NOVEMBER 2ND
All Souls’ Day: day of my birth.
Alone, I come to the asylum-hotel.
Belonging to all time here, I stand in the foyer,
and glimpse from the edge of my vision
the admission of a young man –
his chaos controlled by tranquillising giants,
and behind dark glasses.
Climbing a number of flights of
hastily narrowing, spiralling stairs,
I arrive at where a white-clothed proprietress
pauses – matronly in her smile:
in her denial of dislocation – of the door
locked and bolted; the opaque window.
A nurse lingers – out of her view.
Descending the back stairs,
I find myself in a tunnel, barely lit –
its walls and ceiling unplastered, revealing
the unique fragrance of psychosis….
Along this forbidden corridor, shrivelled creatures
mutter and shuffle. I cannot communicate:
I observe.
Before my throat tightens – even before I have
spoken your name – you are coming towards me,
sister of my soul: your fairness seems an illumination….
One by one, all subterranean guests are
moved by your stillness: you unlock them; unbolt their doors.
Male and female, they follow us patiently –
climbing that straight, wide staircase
to the nucleus of the house: a landing facing east
where an arched, stained glass window admits
a whole birthday of light through its red, gold and blue –
engendering presents of energy, clarity, communication….
You have asked for the woman in white to join us:
we form an expectant crescent. From clearest sky,
sunlight taps, taps the brightly stained.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
ALL HALLOWS
All Hallows light, brittle between highest, south clouds,
feels essence most when shell becomes fractured:
an essence which seems sucked in, seems blown out –
beyond any orbit.
Indoors – eyes clasp the clover-pink vaporiser;
in the shade, heart-shaped holes in its sides
provide lights for giants – patterns for the plain wall:
behind the scalloped circle of the main window,
candleflame constantly wavers …
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
TO A YOUNG GIRL (free translation of Sappho’s Greek)
He seems like one of the gods –
that man you are facing:
who so closely attends to the fragrance within words;
to the light within your laughter….
It is that which confounds me:
each time I glance at you – I am without sound.
My tongue is locked; and at once, a fine fire
glistens beneath my skin. I turn blind; there is a
whirring in my ear.
I am awash with love – unable to be still….
I am drawn towards my dying.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
The Wisdom Tree, Salzburg University Press, 1993, 245pp, ISBN 3-7052-0626-5
Neptune’s Daughters, Expansions Unlimited Press, 1999, 45pp, ISBN 1-900410-05-2
She is grateful to all those who have encouraged her - especially the poet Fred Beake. Many of the poems are surreal, some drawn directly from dream imagery: others capture the spirit of a person or place. Influences include Hebridean song, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath.
Poetry Salzburg is an English language poetry press, originally founded by James Hogg in 1971 as the University of Salzburg Press.
Index of poems
• Uncollected poems:
Idyllwild, California / Wester Ross / Triassic Coast / Shanklin Rain
• Poems from The Wisdom Tree:
Derelict / Song Circle / The Cleansing / The Contentious Wife / William and Stella / The Nursery / Blacksop and Blue / Memoir / Peculiar Violet / Moat House, Olveston / East
• Poems from Neptune's Daughters:
Life Review / Art Deco, Miami Beach / Breaking Free / Neptune's Daughters / November 2nd / All Hallows / To a Young Girl
• Illustrated poems that appeared in the GreenSpirit journal:
Wind versus Sun / Beech Owl Barn / Perdita / Rapport / June / Marianne / Chinese Angelica / Whitby / Borderland
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA
In the moment between dreaming and waking,
the sky needs to be hidden,
the unbidden words furled:
in Idyllwild, a time long after the dream
is the time to begin.
Blue jay, robin and woodpecker
witness the dawn –
at one with the butterscotch tang of the pine-bark,
the chocolate bark of the manzanita.
By forest boulders on Mount San Jacinto,
raccoons, lizards, are keenly aware
of wolf, coyote,
mountain lion, black bear.
Now, words fly wild as disturbed feathers;
then swoop like an eagle
thru pure, bare sky.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
WESTER ROSS
Wherever I go, I sense mountains:
pyramids and paps
of sandstone, limestone and gneiss
replenish the psyche.
To watch is to touch.
Lochs live peacefully among them,
purple and turquoise: at Gairloch,
a great skua soars over the boat;
I see a cormorant, a harbour of porpoises;
a gray seal, almost asleep,
her head above the water.
On the horizon, Skye, Harris,
brighten and fade in a thin mist.
In Plockton, the lowest of rainbows
grazes Loch Carron;
the sun turns theatrical,
illuminating a tiny island.
Near the Pass of the Cattle,
Highland cows and Jacob ewes
are unfazed by the passing car –
or by any invader, past or present.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
TRIASSIC COAST
Midsummer Day, two thousand and three:
east Devon light on the chicks of kittiwakes,
on cormorants and shags,
on the rust-red Triassic stacks
of Ladram Bay.
A peregrine falcon responds
to the focusing of eyes:
flies niftily from her cliff-nest
to circle the boats.
On Budleigh Salterton pebbles,
naturists lie in a breezy sun:
on the moist sand at Orcombe Point –
the coast’s west end –
a kitesurfer takes to her heart
the energy of sky, of afternoon tidelines.
She keeps it for only a second:
she frees it, sending it
high above the water.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Poetry Salzburg Review
up to index
SHANKLIN RAIN
All this July day, soft rain has soaked
my orange American cotton:
I have walked through a chine
that is like a subtropical biome.
Under the platform’s roof,
the station clock makes dripping sounds.
A small woman talks to herself on a painted bench
to assuage the loneliness –
her voice, like that of a radio broadcaster,
switched on and off … and on …
Behind us, a waiting-room is locked.
Outside, mist nets the east cliff;
while diesel and steam, with their different
rhythms and gauges,
take visitors, commuters, backwards and forwards
like a pendulum, a tide.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
First published in Reach
up to index
POEMS from THE WISDOM TREE
DERELICT
Haggard as November, he thirsts for the river.
How fast it winds! –
as though it were cleaning a secret wound
on the hip of the land.
And under the night’s untenanted sky,
he listens to the loosened –
to the wind-without-code on the birdless tree,
to the plummeting leaf, with its brief goodbye.
And he listens. And he listens to the chastened, the blanched.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
SONG CIRCLE
from A Year of Dreams
Make me your bairn, my laird of the looms,
for one is the weaver and one is the web,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Allow me a lull, my lullaby king,
for one is the crooner and one is the slumber,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Prepare me a cairn, my steward of stones,
for one is the craftsman and one is the crown,
but both are the priests of the cycle of Song.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE CLEANSING
from A Year of Dreams
She brought him a thimble of milk from his childhood,
her breath on its bony rim timid as down.
He chose her a chalice that steamed with her youth;
it boasted of bridles round wrathful brown heads.
Gold-soft he watched: he would win her.
She lent him a tankard of froth from his manhood.
Strong as wet ropes, he strode round its warmth.
He gave her an earthenware jug for her cleansing,
took – from her morning-cheek – crumbs of cold sleep,
slops of small tears.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE CONTENTIOUS WIFE
She arrives insufferably late.
Her visited husband tenses, reddens, listens:
her companion slackens….
Both of them are conscious of the concentrated hatred –
in her voice, in her eye.
Yet neither man turns violent:
through the willow-laced window comes abundant sweet light.
And then a youngster appears; who swings between the chair-arms:
wanting, wanting laughter.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
WILLIAM AND STELLA
While William the librarian hibernates,
while Stella, in wellingtons, gardens,
I make myself walk between rain-scented lines of deciduous trees –
trying, in vain, to ease the expanding mind into routine’s
narrow lanes.
Time and again I reflect upon yesterday’s dream –
when every archway, every porch that I approached
became too low….
William the librarian continuously sleeps,
judiciously nourished with words – which seem fluid things….
Stella, wisest among the latest wet blooms,
communes with what neither confines nor excludes.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
THE NURSERY
When I was thirteen,
when my mind hurt with Latin unseens and theorems,
when lunch-times became petty,
I would leave the classroom, hall, kitchen,
would climb past staff-room and green-room, and enter the nursery -
where the starched matron was unconcerned with analysis,
with academic fashion-shows.
I would lie on the ottoman, staring at the white paint
of cleansed cupboards, a glass of kaolin near my hand,
my throat constricted by the nameless phobia-in-charge.
Convalescents came and went: Fiona, with the magnolia
knee; Rosemary, light pirouetting in her eye.
I learnt to listen to the assistant, Olive Broomfield,
who talked about Ireland, her homeland: about mountains; moss;
tubercular blood…. Softly, I would acquaint her with my poems.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
BLACKSOP AND BLUE
Months previously, I had dreamed of such a place:
of prosaic arcades, and post-war colleges;
of unpopular markets, and angular council estates;
of correct pollards, in stale, sterile air….
Now one of my college tutors, a Dr David Blue,
whose outspokenness concealed great frailness,
had been appointed quite wrongly.
In most departments,
naďvety was trained to become spurious wisdom:
a jumble of girls would be sorted and sent to a host of schools –
only to learn common endurance.
Obviously unappreciated,
the doctor preferred an acquaintance with outcasts –
with a surrealistic world full of prophecy and curses….
Inexplicably, I knew he would finish abruptly –
would be the last of his mother’s three sons to predecease her:
Blacksop was a town where complacency masked violent ends –
where the flatness of the land constantly restrained.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
up to index
MEMOIR
Just when her father was drowning in the Avon,
Fiona MacPherson was cycling downhill.
I know because I saw her, still in her school gaberdine,
her blondness dressed in a crimson hood.
It was Friday afternoon: dog-walking time.
The morning papers were saturated with it:
the unmended railing, the learner-driver, the plunge into the river.
Mother left her cereal-bowl at once – to weep in the hall;
and all I could do, meanwhile, was fail to be less jealous
of a popular fourteen-year-old; an emulated beauty.
On Sunday, conditioned not to be too curious,
everyone else was discussing the news in whispers:
not only MacPherson’s accident – his discomfiting, first drama –
but also the change in his daughter; those elements of silence
which made her seem remote…. I resembled her less than ever.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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PECULIAR VIOLET
Today, knowing she is forbidden to look back,
the girl in plain worsted ignores that expressionless bus-queue;
but passes the darkening cathedral, the fountainless council-house
at the end of the straight, tall hill.
And approaching the university tower, the museum,
the resonant triangle of shops,
she chances upon an obscure chemist’s violet glass;
and pauses, conscious that this very glass
is linked to a peculiar enclosed past –
is as forbidden as the escapist’s queue.
Even in dreams she has willed herself to climb
rather than wait, than be taken:
time and again, nearing the zenith;
just once, glimpsing that distant valley
with its flawless colours and contours.
Day after day, night after night,
feeling both ecstasy and misery in her inmost globes –
she concentrates solely on her home-coming.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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MOAT HOUSE, OLVESTON
Near Thornbury Castle and Aust Ferry, there is first
Tockington, and then, Olveston. I approach the
long-forgotten familiarity of Church Lane:
its turns and gradients.
Over thirty years on, Moat House looks heavier,
rather than lighter. Its occupant answers the door:
Reginald Crouch; recently retired Methodist lay preacher;
ninety-three.
He does not know me, but recollects my late parents;
together, we remember his late wife, Daisy;
through her, I remember myself – my inner child:
I bring my stilted past into the doorway of the present.
Daisy, fresh as infancy, is imploring me to play more,
to put on shorter dresses; to be open-throated.
Moat House has an aroma of home-cooked meals,
floral soaps, pre-motorway hedgerows.
The place seems heavier now, like its owner: who slowly
uncovers his past; embraces his present – those visits from
middle-aged sons; grandchildren. Safe on his threshold,
safe within the frame of Methodism – he begins his goodbye.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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EAST
Early in February, the wind comes straight from Siberia –
bearing on its giant spine a fine snow.
Easterly is broader than northerly: it may clasp you to death.
Easterly is a bear: northerly is known for its
lupine tooth.
In Latvia and Lithuania, the people rise up with the wind:
thirty degrees of frost do not deter them.
Outer cold and inner heat meet within the
pains of a slow burning; an uncertain birth.
In the Middle East: war.
On English television, speculation camouflages
every insecurity.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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POEMS from NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTERS
LIFE REVIEW
A mother attempts to videophone her son:
because of one half-broken button,
nothing is to be seen.
However – fancying she hears the
whispering of companions – she tries again.
All of a sudden – visions begin:
in the first – the schoolboy of nine crouches in front of a
stage hearth: others in the class, it seems, are chosen for
drama-without-scars.
Mother, like son, is the unobserved observer.
In her vision of the six-year-old boy by the sea –
toying with a watch that she has given him – she catches herself
stealing it back; and passing it on….
recalling that north-east wind at the end of August,
she learns about his sense of unreality.
In a third vision – he turns into the baby in the grass:
becomes the imago; the six-pointed star….
When he jumps his wordless patterns into unlimited air,
she feels how he concentrates the wisdom
here and there; here and there.
At last, the videophone reveals him fully nineteen –
rejection pressed into withdrawn pupils:
beyond them – are signs of a dying star….
Finding its pulse – the mother begins to listen:
to respond in time.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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ART DECO, MIAMI BEACH
The New Year translucency remains within sea:
art deco turquoise.
The sky looks full of itself, with its
frequent metallic fowl.
Underneath it, young men lounge on chaises longues –
salt-clean; keen for uniformity.
Everywhere, there are pastels of purple, coral, jade.
The foreignness of Florida is stronger than that of
Italy, Germany: the language of English conceals
parallel rather than linked worlds.
People have an air of detachment:
a vocabulary of charm.
As I walk along the pearly beach,
my mood shifts: I begin depressed by the
absence of cliffs – of vitality in
tides and condominiums.
The rhythm in my hip – the afternoon light
laced with a wakening wind – pull me to the pier:
to the pelican’s poised beak and wing.
In a while – willing to connect – I focus on detail:
the Beth Jacob synagogue; the Wolfsonian Museum.
As six o’clock darkness falls, ocean-front hotels
line their aprons with premature loudness.
Puerto Ricans, Cubans, have opened bikini-thin shops.
At South Pointe, by a fitness circuit,
the elderly, orthodox Jews whisper.
The art of imitation – imitation of art? –
is as constant as in ancient Rome.
Americans pay homage to it in limousines –
or on Rollerblades.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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BREAKING FREE
Wherever she treads on those fringes of town
that encompasses her fear – there, it comes upon her;
and there: a mean, green shed;
gray-roofed; opaque-windowed;
its doors semi-ajar – like trappers’ arms.
Then, it is in her backyard: hard by the
washing-line, the play-square, the kitchen.
And then, it becomes the bedroom:
the narrowing, gray-green walls
pinching the dregs of childhood.
Whenever she hears his drunken steps on the stair,
she pretends to hide beneath blind blanket;
to cover her eyes with stiffening hands.
She attempts to scream at her lock-less door –
but the larynx goes cold….
Sick Mother lives on pilules and elixirs;
is enclosed in a world of sorrows kept hot;
of simmering denial.
Such helplessness binds her daughter as fast as
Father’s abuse. Night after night, she etches
“Liar! Guilty!” on the bruised heart….
Just once, looking in the glass, the girl acknowledges her
pair of wigs – blond basins trapping her
spring of hair: which she imagines
long as a wand, full as a curtain;
free …
freer than a mountain wind.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTERS
Dreamwalking on to the campus of my heart,
I am lost.
The heart cannot be honed like thought:
lessons to be learned are without timetables, indices.
Outside the iced wall that Neptune saltily eats,
the small town sells many maps, many clocks;
and I find my level way to the boundary
between town’s end and sea’s tumultuous start.
An ageless longboat – without sails, without oars –
is tossed to untimely dying by twilight’s violets and grays.
A second boat, alive with oarswomen,
glides into sudden sight by harbour walls….
My sister from over the water –
you have opened doors in a number of walls:
now, look into my campus-heart;
into my hushed brightness.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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NOVEMBER 2ND
All Souls’ Day: day of my birth.
Alone, I come to the asylum-hotel.
Belonging to all time here, I stand in the foyer,
and glimpse from the edge of my vision
the admission of a young man –
his chaos controlled by tranquillising giants,
and behind dark glasses.
Climbing a number of flights of
hastily narrowing, spiralling stairs,
I arrive at where a white-clothed proprietress
pauses – matronly in her smile:
in her denial of dislocation – of the door
locked and bolted; the opaque window.
A nurse lingers – out of her view.
Descending the back stairs,
I find myself in a tunnel, barely lit –
its walls and ceiling unplastered, revealing
the unique fragrance of psychosis….
Along this forbidden corridor, shrivelled creatures
mutter and shuffle. I cannot communicate:
I observe.
Before my throat tightens – even before I have
spoken your name – you are coming towards me,
sister of my soul: your fairness seems an illumination….
One by one, all subterranean guests are
moved by your stillness: you unlock them; unbolt their doors.
Male and female, they follow us patiently –
climbing that straight, wide staircase
to the nucleus of the house: a landing facing east
where an arched, stained glass window admits
a whole birthday of light through its red, gold and blue –
engendering presents of energy, clarity, communication….
You have asked for the woman in white to join us:
we form an expectant crescent. From clearest sky,
sunlight taps, taps the brightly stained.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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ALL HALLOWS
All Hallows light, brittle between highest, south clouds,
feels essence most when shell becomes fractured:
an essence which seems sucked in, seems blown out –
beyond any orbit.
Indoors – eyes clasp the clover-pink vaporiser;
in the shade, heart-shaped holes in its sides
provide lights for giants – patterns for the plain wall:
behind the scalloped circle of the main window,
candleflame constantly wavers …
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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TO A YOUNG GIRL (free translation of Sappho’s Greek)
He seems like one of the gods –
that man you are facing:
who so closely attends to the fragrance within words;
to the light within your laughter….
It is that which confounds me:
each time I glance at you – I am without sound.
My tongue is locked; and at once, a fine fire
glistens beneath my skin. I turn blind; there is a
whirring in my ear.
I am awash with love – unable to be still….
I am drawn towards my dying.
Copyright © JENNY JOHNSON
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