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John L. Stanizzi
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 honey bees,
their yellow baskets bulging,
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 bootlace.
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 Asiatic day flowers,
with that single chance to fleck the path
with blues,
remind me that light stays for a moment,
that things vanish,
and that soon winter will carve the windows
into stars of ice,
mementos of warm, luminous sunlight.
About the writer:
John L. Stanizzi is the author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, POND, and The Tree That Lights the Way Home. Besides Star 82, Stanizzi’s poems are in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, and others. His nonfiction has been in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, and others. He was awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction, 2021 from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.
Image: Autumn by Onur Yasar. Watercolor. No size specified. By 2020. By permission. Onur Yasar is an artist and teacher in Turkey.
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