Pilgrim Place , CA - Home to Mark and Mary Johnson
The IMAC community is eternally grateful for the gift of Mark's gentle friendship and
steadfast partnership in our collective work on climate change.
For years, Mark helped ensure IMAC's vitality by serving as our Treasurer, facilitating IMAC's fiscal sponsorship
by CLBSJ until its transfer to The Shalom Center, managing IMAC's social media presence, facilitating our
in-person strategy meetings, and always encouraging us onward with his wisdom and grace, conveyed often
through his penetrating poetry, which he would so generously share with us
to open or close our biweekly Steering Committee calls.
Of the countless ways in which Mark enriched our lives, perhaps his greatest gift was to teach us, through his own example, how to handle life's many challenges with a grace that comes from
fully embracing the power of gentleness and peace.
We will continue to honor Mark by infusing his loving spirit into all that we do.
Preaching the Pandemic
For three years
I’ve watched you dash
From garden plot to garden plot
Your tail weaving
Your legs syncopated
Your head lifted slightly
Your destination predetermined
And never seen your breastplate
The lapis lazuli medallion
Under your chin
Or the flecking on your back
Slivers of the same bold blue.
Until today when your nose
Rose over the edge of the stair
Carpeted in brown weave
With blue slivers just like you
A kind of biomimicry.
And you stopped to stare
Twisting your head
To put me squarely
In your lidded eye
Waiting to decide
If it was safe to climb the stair.
That’s when
Stepping over the edge
With your many hinged toes
And pulling yourself up
The sun caught the brilliance
Of your royal escutcheon.
Judging no threat
In my practiced stillness
You continued stair by stair
Growing in stature and detail
Reticulation and weave
Pumping your body up and down
Preparing to bellow a warning
Until I thought I saw fire
Coming from your mouth
Preaching the Pandemic
Issuing prophecies
Of the eschaton.
Mark C. Johnson 2020:0328
***********
It may be
Meta
Physical
But there is
Still pain
And pleasure
In the simple signs
Of aging
Running water
Bright sun
Sudden cold
Will produce tears
Momentary blindness
Frequent needs
Which are already
Inconvenient
To evacuate
Empty the body
As though it were
A house on fire.
Mark C. Johnson
(Ecclesiastes 12:1-8)