Out of the Ruins

by Johnson, William C.

• ISBN13: 9781881090311
• ISBN10: 1881090310
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Confluence Pr

Summary

Bill Johnson's poems recreate his world in the Pacific Northwest where wild rivers, steelhead, moose, and lightning are common sights. Whether beholding the Northern Lights, painting the trim on his house, or staring into a high meadow where the dark shape of a bear "lumbers through patches of late melting snow," Johnson pledges his allegiance to the indescribable joy we find in creation. He uses even the most homely objects in his poems--a worn out pair of work boots, a collapsed barn--to embody the past and unite it with the present. In doing so, he leads us out of the ruins along the path to love and redemption.

Table of Contents

I. Northern Lights
Stopping at an Abandoned Farm	3	(1)
Morning Work	4	(1)
Northern Lights	5	(1)
Fort Wright Bridge	6	(1)
Trout	7	(1)
Root Cellar	8	(1)
Quince	9	(1)
My Father's Work	10	(1)
Girl and Barn: A Photograph, 1931	11	(1)
Terminal Ice	12	(1)
Letter from Arlington	13	(1)
Snapbeans	14	(3)
II. Painting the Trim
New Year's Eve	17	(1)
Floating the Salmon River	18	(1)
Bear in Fog	19	(1)
My Daughter's Song	20	(1)
At Dworshak Dam	21	(2)
Fireweed	23	(1)
Burning the Raspberry Canes	24	(1)
Bouquet	25	(1)
At Sheep Lake During the Gulf War	26	(1)
Painting the Trim	27	(1)
On Finding a Snapshot of My Children	28	(3)
III. Obsequy for the End of the Century
Coyoteskin	31	(1)
On the Palouse	32	(1)
A Japanese Fisherman on the Henry's Fork	33	(1)
Chinese Ruins on the Salmon	34	(1)
Icefishing on Lost Valley Reservoir	35	(2)
Steelhead	37	(1)
Moose	38	(1)
Obsequy for the End of the Century	39	(1)
The Salmon	40	(1)
A Pulling	41	(2)
Black Lead Mountain	43	(1)
Suicide Race	44	(1)
In Mountain Lightning	45	(4)
IV. Out of the Ruins
Passage	49	(1)
Late Autumn Run	50	(2)
The Elm	52	(1)
Out of the Ruins	53	(1)
Hawks	54	(1)
At Fishtrap	55	(1)
Workboots	56	(1)
Dragging Bottom	57	(1)
Cedar	58	(1)
Paring My Mother's Nails	59	(1)
Wildrose Cemetery	60