Linear Thinking
Susan Johnson

A heron throws a shadow like a ventriloquist
throws sound.  The attachment is real
but not easy to detect, as with so many lines
that are and aren’t there like those between
spider and fly. An orb weaver hangs her dinner
out to dry, web strung iris to eave.
Miles away a child yells: “Pink Sneaker,”
which one hears and does not hear.

Light couldn’t pass through a vacuum if,
like sound, it was structured as a wave.
Waves like petals split open in the heat.
One peers beneath the surface hoping
for a glimpse of the life there, its intensity
and decay. Or of Narcissus, who perhaps,
wasn’t narcissistic enough. Sometimes
I catch sight of myself before preparing

myself as I always prepare myself
for the sight of myself. Of course it’s risky.
One begins to lean lilacward, mistaking
acorns for ocarinas. The queue in one’s mind
becomes impatient. Though the sun
has 4.5 billion years left to burn, as of Tuesday,
it’s still a midlife crisis star unable to stop
and ask directions as it drives its red Ferrari

into the horizon each dusk.  And every night
we follow despite the hand-painted sign:
We close ten minutes before closing.
For we are all geocentric at heart: Thelma
rising each dawn to go whelking at the harbor.
We are all predators and prey.  As the heron
once said: Even when no one’s here someone’s here.
And I can’t help but circle back to that.

Susan Johnson teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her poetry has appeared in Freshwater, Rhino, Pearl, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, Greensboro Review, Massachusetts Review, Gastronomica, among others.

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