March 2021
Robert K. Johnson
choirofday@cs.com
choirofday@cs.com
Bio Note: My poems are spins on our everyday world, which has always gripped me much more than
science-fiction worlds. A now retired English Professor, I taught for many years at Suffolk University in Boston.
I also for several years was Poetry Editor for Ibbetson Street magazine. I have had several collections
of poems published.
To Be Hard of Hearing
It's as if
you are in the children's twilight game
of chasing fireflies on a dark lawn,
trying to capture them in a bottle
as they float swiftly by
lighting up and blinking off.
Except the fireflies are words
flashing at a loud party
and you hope to catch the key words
so that—all evening long—
you can comprehend
the subjects talked about.
Except you are not in fact a child
and it isn't just a game
and finally, exhausted,
you long for dead silence.
©2021 Robert K. Johnson
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