Elena Johnson

Dream of a Summerless Summer

The rains came this spring
and the clouds didn't leave.

The ash trees budded
but didn't bloom.

Cherry branches droop,
saturated and fruitless.

The hood of my raincoat
hangs over my eyes.

Sidewalk a conduit,
lawns become marshes.

All the trees overrun
with rain of their own--

the branches, leaves overflow.
The swallows and waxwings

head for the mountains--they sense
the rain's outer edge. My boots are

buckets, contain their own puddles,
my toes now fully amphibian.

The rain extends itself
through August. Unblossoms

the tulips and lilacs, knocks
maple keys flightless.

Salmon and trout swim up from the creeks,
glimmer below unanchored dumpsters.






Bio

Elena Johnson is the author of Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra (Gaspereau, 2015), a collection of poems set at a remote ecology research station in the Yukon. Her poems have been translated into French, set to music, and sung by choirs. She was a co-editor of Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House, 2021). She lives in Vancouver, on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people, where she works as an editor and writing mentor.

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