November 8, 2019 7.02 a.m. 29 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Panoplied in cold, fall has charred the entire landscape, as memories 

overtake my thoughts – visions of dragonfly days,
     and on the first morning the

notification by the great blue heron on the
     far side of the pond that the

dawns ahead would be filled with myriad marvels; he was right.

3.25.2019 1.28 p.m. 48 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Presentiments in this cold wind that winter and spring have
operated together engendering warm clouds, frigid sunniness;
nascent open water, ice like frosted-glass, milfoil unfurls from the bottom,
debauched invader, raider of oxygen and space, whorling interloper.

2.26.19 4.22 p.m. 27 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Knows desire without an object of desire,
All mind and violence and nothing felt.

He knows he has nothing more to think about.
Like the wind that lashes everything at once.
                                                -Wallace Stevens
                                                -Chaos in Motion and Not in Motion

after Wallace Stevens

Petulance and ego this wind that lashes everything at once,
obstructive and deep-throated, grumbling up from the hills,
nefarious creature buffeting self-portraits into the pond’s surface,
diagrams of this shape-shifting shade, all violence and nothing felt.

2.24.19 8.11 a.m. 25 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Pious with its mellow hissing in the trees,
onomatopoetic voice of the rain, a sound
nearly silent; more vision than sound is the rain
drumming on the melting skin of the pond.

12.8.18 6.17 p.m. 21 degrees

by John Stanizzi

--Yesterday the pond was frozen. 
This evening it has thawed. 
But it is 21 degrees,
so that tomorrow…
…yes, winter’s changeability has arrived…


Prodigious conversion from that which we may peer through,
opening our vision to a strangeness like Frost’s,
nuanced and misshapen, to this glazed and shifting surface,
damascene transformation more closely related to stone than to water.

12.1.18 1.34 p.m. 41 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Proposals of clouds in an otherwise 9/11 sky;
overnight squall’s remnants resemble Queen Anne’s Lace,
nighttime blossoms in the grass.   The geometry of an island of ice is
drawn toward the middle of the pond, its shoreline thawing.

11.13.2018 2.46 p.m. 39 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Piety arrives with a female evening grosbeak.
Offed by chill wind, the leaves cover the wet forest ground.
Nearby, the look of running water
dazzles like a miniature Topajos, miniature Amazon.

11.11.2018 3.11 p.m. 39 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Ponds’ conflux – run-off from Fowler’s pond
overflows the small stone wall along with street run-off;
nozzling, they warble a crystal duet in the birdless
dusk beginning to bear down on the half-buried bullheads sleeping.

11.10.2018 10.06 a.m. 34 degrees

by John Stanizzi

Pitchy dark where winter has just this moment arrived
out of the north hills; it crawls up under my shirt,
naturally and unfazed, as if it were trying to warm itself --
daguerrean-downstream rush of the brook gossips with its cold voice.