John L. Stanizzi
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Early Fall
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves… Virginia Woolf The landscape curls, the tired leaves warp, the bees’, their baskets nearly empty, mine the cobblestone streets of sunflowers. The branches of the apple tree are bowed, and the apples, each a cratered planet, fall from the sky, as in the woods late flowers appear like new tattoos. They all do something different to the air into which they rush. Goldenrod, a swirling Roman candle. Thoroughwort and sweet Joe-Pye weed, architecture of coarse domes the color of blood, the color of moonlight. Queen Anne’s Lace, noiseless island of bootstrings. Jewelweed, succulent and poised for flight. All a bit rough around the edges, all a little bulked up as the nights cool and the chilled dew shines through morning and even splashes the new afternoon, while the Asiatic day blooms. There is a single chance to to walk the path, shivering- it reminds me that light stays only for a moment, that things vanish, and that soon winter will carve the windows into stars of ice, mementos of warm, luminous sunlight from long ago. |
John L. Stanizzi, author of fourteen books. Some of his titles are Chants, Sleepwalking, POND, Feathers & Bones, and many others. His nonfiction is in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast, Potato Soup Review (Potato Soup named his story Pants best of 2021). Also in 2021 he received a Creative Writing-Non-Fiction Fellowship from Connecticut’s Comm. on the Arts. John is a former Wesleyan Univ. Etherington Scholar and English Professor. He is also a former New England Poet of the year. John’s memoir, Bless Me Father for I have Sinned will be ready for publication with the year. John has just completed judging New England’s “New England Poet of the Year.” John has worked as a Teaching Artist with “Poetry Out Loud,” The Connecticut “Fresh Voices Competition, and the College/University Poet of the year.