John Stanizzi
FOURTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
-Wallace Stevens
-Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
-Wallace Stevens
-Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
If there could be fourteen ways to look at
a blackbird, this could be the fourteenth way.
Though there are no snowy mountains there is
the eye of the blackbird moving around
the gold tree, looking for two other birds.
I too became part of the pantomime —
a blackbird taking in a golden tree,
and me, just outside the mosaic sky.
The autumn winds blew more chill every day,
and we went on with our seeking, our search.
I stood beside a woman and we stared
into the skeleton which would soon be
naked, striped clean by the winds of autumn
eventually. We spoke together.
If there could be fourteen, why not fifteen.
The blackbird whistled; then there was silence –
the inflection and the innuendo.
The leaf on the branch. The branch just after.
The leaf has fallen and now we may go,
walking across the grass where the leaf fell.
It is not the bird that is golden, but
the tree, and then only for a moment.
Tell me why, if you can, why the bird looks
wary. Doesn’t he own a golden coach?
If the coach were ours we would not falter.
If there could be fourteen ways to look at
a blackbird taking in a golden tree,
naked, striped clean by the winds of autumn…
The leaf has fallen and now we may go.
If the coach were ours we would not falter.
About the writer:
John L. Stanizzi has published several books, including Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Chants, Sundowning, and POND. His creative work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, Rattle, Tar River and others. Stanizzi’s nonfiction has been published in Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, Literature and Belief, many others. He is former New England Poet of the Year, Wesleyan Etherington Scholar, and a recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.
Image: Nawazi painting by Sahanawaz Hussain (2000- ). No medium specified. No size specified. 2020. By free license.
