January 2018
Robert K. Johnson
choirofday@cs.com
Born in New York City (in Elmhurst), I lived in several different places there but have memories only of The Bronx (off Fordham Road). Then my family moved out "on The Island"—to Lynbrook, where we stayed till I graduated from Hofstra (then a College). Several years after my wife, Pat, and I married, we, plus our two children, settled in the Boston area and have remained there (except for my daughter, Kate, who has lived in Manhattan for quite a while). I have been writing poetry since I was twelve (many moons ago).

​MEN IN CITY PARKS  


It is their stolidness 
that I admire...
               those men
who lumber to a halt
in sun-hazed city parks,
lower their haunches into
the brittle grass, and sprawl,
slow as glaciers.

Buddhas in bulk,
               they, slowly,
strip to the waist...
leaving their belts half-hidden
under the soft, white folds
of their sagging stomachs.
               Then, they gaze,
unblinking, blank-eyed, beyond
the grass that borders their flesh,
beyond the bobbing heads
of all the passersby;
               wholly absorbed
in their own thoughts, remote
as a trail of clouds
hung in a windless sky.

previously published in BLOSSOMS OF THE APRICOT

​

JENNIFER
(age twenty)

Whatever
I still don't know,
I know now what a crush is,

know it is what I felt
all those earlier times,
know it is not the love

I have just lost,
a loss that brings me pain
so punishing

I can't stand up,
can only lie in bed
and fight to breathe.

previously published in REACH POETRY
©2018 Robert K. Johnson
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