Kenneth Johnson

Elegy to the Past

The wind sweeps up the
remnants left by the rain,
a river divides the hills but
only half the valley knows
I asked the stars where they
keep their secrets and
they led me to the darker parts
of the sky, the ones without names,
the ones only the past remembers.
Some say the soul becomes lighter
when you leave the past behind,
but every night
I hear it tapping on my door,
whispering softly like a prayer
I learned as a child.
There are other things I never
learned but I’ve always known.
Sometimes, you see the end of
something before it even begins,
the way a name can float in your
mouth without finding form.
There are days you wake
without finding the ground.
I woke this morning trying
to remember forgotten things.
I saw my face reflected
in the mirror and saw there
are parts of me disappearing.
You can’t bury something
without losing part of yourself.

Kenneth Johnson is a 2024 Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and visual artist living in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in Talking River Review, San Antonio Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and other publications. He is the author of the chapbook Molten Muse.