Sonja Johanson has work appearing in or forthcoming at BOAAT, Outlook Springs, and The Writer’s Almanac. She is a contributing editor at the Found Poetry Review, and the author of Impossible Dovetail (Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. ---------
My Heart on the Stubai Glacier
Other hearts have been here
before her. I hope she is only on loan,
that someone remembers finding
lagniappe in the stacks, epiphany
in the card catalogue, how
to package up a book ordered
by another library, will return
her when she has served her purpose.
I cannot know. She is one in a long string
of cardiac events. Other hearts
have thrummed in sympathy
by the fireside, downed bowls
of steaming soup, sported lederhosen,
dirndl dresses. Other hearts raced
the thinning air, pumped
oxygen through the ice.
They looked for edelweiss in the valleys,
learned vielgerühmtes Österreich,
went singing into the clear
went singing into the clear
morning, the boom
of an avalanche behind them.
Not every heart came back.