Checkpoint
A border guard asks:
anything to declare?
I feel I must admit
that I’m carrying
part of my grandfather’s pain.
He studies my face
and flips through regulations.
I continue, coming clean:
I am weighed down
with my father’s regret.
He looks over his glasses at me:
Any rare fauna or exotic plant
life in your possession today?
Of course not, I say.
My father was an oak tree,
not an exotic.
Isn’t your father an oak too?
Did strangers approach you
to carry things over?
No? Stand aside anyway,
so those with nothing to declare
may pass on ahead of you.
—Jeffrey L. Johnson
✨ This poem is in honor of our September theme: Arriving & Leaving
“Checkpoint” is taken from This Will Be a Sign. Copyright © 2020 by Jeffrey L. Johnson. Used by permission of Fernwood Press. All rights reserved. www.fernwoodpress.com. Photo by Markus Spiske, via Unsplash.
oooh this is the kind of poem I love, where imagery that can't be strictly true is dropped into a true moment in time.