janet st. john

Portland Japanese Garden, 2017. In the garden, hands have clipped, wired branches, run a wide-toothed wood rake through gravel in rings around a mossy island, made space in a forest for us sit and be. We entered through a gateway, dropping tourists’ chatter, distant trains’ blaring horns, persistent highway hum like a robe no longer needed, at least for now, for this moment. We wandered through bamboo and stepped over carefully placed stones, climbed short-shelved stairs, cro