Lisa St John

Mowing The Lawn

You would hate the way I mow the lawn—my line-ish things, my
lack of symmetry, my
desire to go over the same spot twice.
You would hate that I go right over the rocks you taught me to avoid. My
patterns don’t make sense and if I stop to flip a turtle or watch a baby snake periscope
its new world, I can hear you asking. I can sense your puzzlement.

You told me once: “Lil, if there is an assbackward way to do something you will find it.”
I smile, remembering running down the up escalator in the Paris Metro—you catching me
in time for the free concert in Saint Sulpice. We made it. We always made it.

And now I hit the rock and it makes that crunching noise
and now I go over the rock
and over it
and let it make that crunching noise because something should be allowed to make noise.

You would hate the way I keep stopping the mower to get a drink or write a few lines.

You would hate the way I go over twigs of increasing size just to see how much the blades can take.

You would not understand why I keep it in first gear
only. And only you would understand why sometimes I mow the lawn more than once a week.

(published in the 2016 Fish Anthology)


Nova Scotian

Scraggy as the greygreen rocky shoreline, the old man
with his dirty cap askew walks his brown, scruffy, limping dog up the stony path.

The ragged stubble and the sinking skin of a life
mirror the rocky coastline and the slow,
inevitable,
tide.

And the limping brown dog whose beard is turning white lifts his leg, and the old man
scratches the ass of his dark blue work pants and thinks I will take him in the boat today.
Too old to bark at skyrats, too tired to chase…anything. He looks up at the old man and
thinks Home.

Weathered red paint of the fishing shacks cracking into view, and the old man sees them.
This is how they’ve always been. And nothing I will do can change them.

Children question his deep, long lines and young men answer them saying Someday I’ll know<br>
what he knows.
And young girls think I wish he were my father.
And women ripe for life think Someday a man like that will love me.

(published in Ponderings 2015)


Of Light And Mornings

I may go out into the world later.
Now I want to go in
to the outer world.

Diffused distractions move along the corners of morning, and there’s a chipmunk.
Darting in and out of not-so-hidden spaces until it decides I am no threat.

Refractions and reflections paint the gray out of pre-dawn, the source moving higher in
the sky as I walk. This changes everything and leaves all as it was before.

Both Snell and Descartes said so, so….

There is a deer. She looks at me and pretends I am not there. She looks at me and
pretends she is not there. If I look close enough there are fleas and ticks and maybe lice,
but if I stay still and squint, she could be a mother or a bride. Either way, there are at least
fifty ways to cook venison.

There is a rustling. Given away by sound, what was invisible is not.

There is no color without light, and it’s comforting, somehow, to know the greyness
below.

I stay still, so still,
and let the mosquito land on my tongue.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.

(published in the Light Issue 6 Spring 2018)


About the Author

Lisa St. John is the author of Ponderings (Finishing Line Press) and Swallowing Stones (Kelsay Books). She lives in the Hudson Valley of Upstate New York and enjoys writing in metrical verse which many people think is free verse. Lisa has published her poetry in journals such as Pratik, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Glassworks, SWWIM, and The Ekphrastic Review. She currently works on a memoir when the poems allow it. Her list of publications and awards, as well as other media, can be found on her website at lisachristinastjohn.com.

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