Remembering Hilde by Dennis Johnson

Remembering Hilde by Dennis Johnson: I edited letters from Dennis Johnson to make this short memoir of Dennis's wife, Hilde Johnson. and published it online back in 2004 on the Coracle Press website. Of course, it's not only about Hilde Johnson, it's about their relationship and Dennis's love for his wife. Included is my preface to the memoir and Carolyn Zonailo's "The Turtle Poems" dedicated to Hilde and Dennis.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

4) Bleak House

This will always be Bleak House to me,
Dickensian in its silence and shame.
A place where
I retreated
to a second floor room
and lay low,
as animals do when
they are being stalked.

What binds us to
our silent jailors?
They are shadows or a mirror
cracked diagonally, held
in its wooden frame by dust
and the weight of glass shards
wedged together. A single breath
or movement would disturb
this broken mirror,
send it crashing to the floor.

But these relationships survive;
none of us want to end the complex
arrangement of shards of mirror
resting on broken mirror;
we are dependent
on each other
to maintain the hope
that one day
we might find love.
We stay afraid and alone,
become liars, dissemblers;
even if we escape Bleak House
we still have our secret name,
written in invisible ink,
in a passport: Castrato,
Benedict Arnold, Fools’ Pope.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

2) Visiting Great Aunt Edna

I return to Girouard Avenue
to visit Great Aunt Edna,
the only one of three elderly sisters
still alive and residing
at Grandmother’s flat.
She was Grandmother’s
youngest sister, a Sweeney
who married a Taylor
and lived only blocks
from where I now live,
with her husband Bert,
and Howard, their son,
who had some grievance
against his parents
and moved far away
from Montreal because of it.

But first the car’s gear shift
comes off in my hand
and trying to repair it,
I crawl into the car’s body
to screw the gear shift
back in place,
and discover the car
is a wooden vessel,
a web of slats
covered with plywood,
almost paper thin
for lightness.

We arrive at the Girouard Avenue 

flat to find garbage cans
by the curb. Aunt Edna
is not home. Inside there is
a third story staircase
I didn’t know existed;
it has windows facing the street.
The rooms off the stairs
are bright with natural light.
I wonder if they are heated
in winter or if sunlight
is enough to heat these rooms.
There is no sign of anyone here,
how quiet and serene
to walk through these empty rooms,
where three old ladies lived
and now only one remains.