Two Poems by Janice D. Soderling

Poetry – Issue 12 | June 2011

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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Janice D. Soderling time travels in a Swedish landscape replete with leavings from the Ice Age, the agrarian Stone Age, the Iron Age of the Vikings and medieval times. A former contributor to the Literary Bohemian, her work has appeared most recently at dotdotdash (Australia) and Studio (Canada). She has received Blue Unicorn‘s Harold Witt Memorial Award.

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Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 12 | June 2011