JONATHAN JOHNSON

AMY

This morning I heard wolves through mountain rain.
In thin, first light the low sky wet my face.
The subject was loneliness. Always, again, loneliness.
We are each our own piece of this world a while.
From my body across the valley, I watched
them find one another, four, and sniff and wag
and turn circles of joy and trot off together.
I drove three hours of mountain road to call you.

Jonathan Johnson’s poems have been anthologized in Best American Poetry and read on National Public Radio. His books include the poetry collections Mastodon, 80% Complete, In the Land We Imagined Ourselves, and May Is an Island, and the memoirs Hannah and the Mountain and The Desk on the Sea. Johnson teaches in the MFA at Eastern Washington University and migrates between Washington, his hometown of Marquette, Michigan, and his ancestral village in the Scottish Highlands.