Quick as a Bird

On the back porch
I can tell my mother wonders
how I have become
white-haired as her
dead husband.
                             She laughs
when a sparrow flies by
trailing a white ribbon–
What’s that doing?–

nest building foreign to her,
as senseless as those years
packing apples, quick as a bird,
red fruit rolling past her.
                              Her eyes
are a dark worry.
                              Her hands,
white as quartz, do nothing.

Weapons

Not the least aid to his strength was the sword
with a long wooden hilt which Hrothgr’s spokesman
now lent him in need, Hrunting by name.
It was the best of inherited treasures,
its edge was iron, gleaming with venom-twigs,
hardened in waar-blood; never in the fray
had it failed any man who know how to hold it,
dared undertake the unwelcome journey
to the enemy’s homestead.
                                                        ––Beowulf

Years ago I gave my son
the cherry-stocked Remington 22,
my dad’s gift to me on my 13th birthday.
Now at 18 he’s bought an 8mm
Mauser–pre-World War II vintage, the long
wooden stock gouged and scratched,
the barrel with bayonet mount
pieced in from a Manlicher,
the ammo 1940’s Turkish.

I saw him in his room today.
Sitting on his bed
he fingers the scars, aims at the pine ceiling.
The knots like dead eyes
aim back.
Old men and boys ready themselves
to defend the pass. Clouds darken.
The enemy will come with the snow.

Jack Johnson lives in Peshastin with his wife, Devera Sharp, and his two sons, Jake and Hart. He teaches writing and literature at Wenatchee Valley College. He enjoys vacationing in the southwest with his family.