Elena E. Johnson

YOU DREAM THE SKY DARKENS

You dream the sky darkens with birds.

There’s hardly blue – everything’s
movement, flocks and flocks.

You don’t require
binoculars. Even in the shadow
of flight, you recognize

species and species and species.

As our grandfathers would have,
in this kind of dusk,

this kind of eclipse.



Elena E. Johnson’s manuscript placed second for this year’s Alfred G. Bailey Poetry Prize. Her poetry has also been nominated for the CBC Literary Awards. Work has appeared recently in The Fiddlehead, ARC, Dandelion, This Magazine, CV2, and The Literary Review of Canada, as well as in three anthologies. Elena lives in Vancouver.