Two Poems by Janice D. Soderling

Constants and Variables

At six a.m. we walk the forest path,
Hilda—the Stockholm pooch—and I. She trots
and sniffs confused, confronted by the math
of moss and grass, a dog’s connect-the-dots.
She assays boulders left by glacial ice,
red lingonberries, heather, fragile fern.
I have a matrix too, complex as gneiss.
I know the whats, the why is yet to learn.
We walk an austere northern paradise.
I’m lost in thought, morose and taciturn.
Dumb Hilda rolls delirious with glee.
A rougher force than rolls big rocks like dice
propels us clueless through our brief sojourn.
We walk the path: young Hilda, x and me.

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