“Shadow Walker" is a tender meditation on love beyond the veil. A poem of return, of seeking, and of that unbroken thread between mother and child.

“I Conceal My Craft," Michael Lee Johnson transforms vulnerability into resilience. The poet hides his art beneath the armor of an armadillo -- a symbol of endurance and self-preservation -- while reflecting on the solitude of creation amid the clamor of criticism and commerce. This is a meditation on artistic survival, on what it means to protect one’s voice when the world demands conformity, and on the quiet, steadfast joy of writing for truth’s sake.

In “Eclipse of Thought," Michael Lee Johnson captures the liminal beauty of reflection caught between light and shadow. The poem reads like a celestial meditation -- a moment when reason falters and imagination takes wing. Through the imagery of sun and moon in transition, Johnson explores how inspiration emerges not in clarity, but in that suspended instant between illumination and eclipse -- where thought is born, unfinished, and infinite.

In “Dead Grass-Old Poets," Michael Lee Johnson resurrects two literary titans - Poe and Emerson - and sets them wandering through a surreal afterlife where memory fades, wit endures, and even ghosts grow weary. Through vivid, ironic imagery, the poem becomes a contemplation of genius stripped of grandeur: of how great minds, once full of thunder, settle into the soft hum of mortality. It is at once elegy, satire, and séance -- a poetic encounter where reverence and rebellion meet beneath the same pale sky.