Mosses and Lichens: Poems

Not days of anger

but days of mild congestion,

infants of inconstant sorrow,

days of foam in gutters,

blossoms and snow

mingling where they fall,

a spring of cold profusion.

If a rolling stone gathers no moss, the poems in Devin Johnston’s Mosses and Lichens attend to what accretes over time, as well as to what erodes. They often take place in the middle of life’s journey, at the edge of the woods, at the boundary between human community and wild spaces....