George A. Johnson 

Author, Whistles in the Wind

George A. Johnson is a long-standing member of both the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP). George has won many poetry awards through both of these organizations. In addition, he has coordinated and participated in numerous poetry readings in Door and Brown Counties in Wisconsin, as well as at the Green Bay Botanical Gardens. His poem, “You, Robert Lowell”, was included in the 1996 Robert Penn Warren Anthology, published by the New England Writers. Whistles in the Wind is George's first published chapbook of poetry. 

Sample selection from Whistles in the Wind:

FLICKER

There by the garden, in effortless toil

My brother, The Flicker, is probing the soil

Digging holes in my lawn, but we’ve come to terms

For we share in life’s tidbits, as well as its worms.

Brother Flicker, when soft grubs and maggots are few

You fly to the white pine and hammer anew

But I am earthbound, and decay in my chair

While you beat the branches, I beat the air.

Though your colors are mottled, upon closer view

True vestige of reds and of yellows splash through

While I turn toward the sun, seeking one warming ray

But my reds become jaded, my yellows turn gray.

And I listen for sounds from a feathery throat

Through the mist of the morning, one sweet, piercing note

Haunts the heart of a father that stirred for a bird

But the song I am singing will never be heard.