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 He
is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom,http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7He is also nominated for the James B. Baker Award in poetry,
Sam's
Dot Publishing. He is a contributor in the Silver Boomers poetry
anthology about aging baby boomers, by Silver Boomer Books.
Michael
Lee Johnson presently resides in Itasca, Illinois, United
States. He
lived in Canada during the Vietnam era and will be published as
a
contributor poet in the anthology Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came
to
Canada in the Vietnam War Era publication scheduled for early
2008.
He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia,
Scotland, Turkey, Fuji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United
Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, and
Malaysia.
Visit his website at:
http://poetryman.mysite.com
Tiny Sparrow Feet
It's calm.
Too quiet.
My clear plastic bowl
serves as my bird feeder.
I don't hear the distant
scratching, shuffling
of tiny sparrow feet,
the wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry
morning's lack of the big band sounds.
I walk tentatively to my patio window,
spy the balcony with detective sensitive eyes.
I witness three newly hatched
toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted
deep, in their mother's dead, decaying back.
Their childish beaks bent over elongated,
delicately, into golden chips, and dusted yellow corn.
In the Garden Where the Flowers Grow
I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before-
to the garden of Jesus, olive oil presses, Gethsemane--
trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables didn't poison anyone there.
Passion was sweat on the ground and brow.
There weren't darts of hate, misconception or terrorism;
children on their knees five times a day brainwashed to hate.
Christ didn't lead them astray nor make them pagan pink.
There is no God apart from Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet,
but it's Jesus who makes the garden grow with or without water.
Then and now the apples grow in my garden of forgiveness.
Figs trees grow far away where I can't reach them but believe in
them.
Like the Tamarisk tree, Christ is a source of honey,
manna and wafer, a taste so sweet in the desert so dry.
You don't have to be a scholar to write poetry, religion, or
understand
the Eucharist; but you need to be a real saint to know the
difference.
Islam, is Judas Iscariot among your converts nose pointed toward
Mecca today?
I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before-
to the garden where the flowers grow.
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