May 2019
Begun on November 9, 2018, the POND is finally, slowly beginning to show signs of spring. To refresh your memory, the POND project is this. Every day, at some point during the day, I venture to our pond with my notebook and my camera. I take some notes, some photos. Then I return home and write an acrostic using the letters P, O, N, and D. The major caveat is that I cannot repeat any of the first words. I need a different P, O, N, D word every day for one year. The project ends on November 9, 2019.
4.5.2019
9.55 a.m.
36 degrees
Possibilities everywhere on this still morning –
overlooking the perfect motionlessness of the pond, pussy willows
nod when the red-winged blackbirds light on their branches,
dancing even after the birds, listening to others’ voices, have flown.
4.6.2019
8.18 a.m.
37 degrees
Permanence fleeting these early spring mornings,
oaths of birds on the wire where one mourning dove
nurtures his reflection with sadness’s whistle, and pussy-willows
devour the dew they’ve been blessed with, tiny thirsty sponges.
4.7.2019
7.48 a.m.
32 degrees
Proclamations these birdsongs that fill the light,
optical as the reflections of the corral fence in the water,
nail-less, hung there like shape-notes the trees might sing with a
depth and register inaudible yet stunning to the human ear.
4.8.2019
11.06 a.m.
50 degrees
Pastels now, the grass, the mourning doves, the pond, and
older, much older than the 30 years I’ve come here, the cedar, and
nightcrawlers have emerged in the rain like cockeyed signposts
directing a pair of voracious robins to their next meal.
©2019 John L. Stanizzi
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