These are poems from a project called POND. Every day, for one year, I will walk to our pond, jot a few notes, and take a photo or two. Then I’ll write a 4-line acrostic using P, O, N, D as my first letters, with the extra caveat of never using the same first-word twice. I began the book on November 9, 2018 – will finish November 9, 2019.
—
11.20.18
11.33 a.m.
34 degrees
Pluvial night, the rain hangs on as mist.
Opiod-ripples as a branch releases its gems of rain,
normal and lonely an act as releasing its leaves,
downward in silence, all around me the sound of rushing water.
—
11.22.18
8.54 a.m.
12 degrees
Thanksgiving
Perforated by the wind, each tree creaks, and I see
only the spaces between them roughly outlined.
Nightspot of cloudy ice crowds the spout;
driven ripples ride the thin coastline of ice covering half the pond.
—
11.25.18
10.51 a.m.
45 degrees
After all-night rain all the snow is gone, pond starting to thaw, stream-beds bursting
Palaver between culvert run-off and Fowler’s pond;
one day in summer, when the stream is dry,
nary a drop of water in the overgrown streambeds,
daydreams will invoke thin ice – a map on black paper, drawn with silver pen.
—
11.26.18
2.14 a.m.
46 degrees
Rain beginning
Proteges of the wind — cardinals, washed-out goldfinches;
ocular distortions through the ice lifted from the pond;
nebulous tilting shore, strange as Frost said it was.
Derelict images which I embraced consumed again by the choral streams.
—
11.27.18
12.22 a.m.
35 degrees
Pond completely thawed
Prostrate switchgrass, brown now; not much else green
outside of the coarse cedar, its knuckled cones,
needles, and sweet ubiquitous scent.
Downwind, even standing in two feet of snow, I’ll summon spring.
—
John L. Stanizzi is author of the full-length collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, and Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces. His newest book, Chants, will be out in February with Cervena Barva Press.
