Beginning Again, by John L. Stanizzi

Woman at a Window, by Caspar David Friedrich (Germany) 1822

​Beginning Again
 
When, finally, she accepted his absence,
she dared to gaze out the window.
 
The River Elbe, 
ascribed to the northwest lane 
and its draughts
(the mind of the ship 
having taken that route, too)
commences in the mountains
of the Czech Republic, 
twines through Germany,
is even Bohemian for a moment,
(which piques her interest)
and even after all these years,
the breeze dreams in lurid colors
before emptying 
into the North Sea at Cuxhaven,
all of which inspires her 
to follow the poplars
dancing graciously 
in dreams of the southeast,
the Sandstone Mountains, the Ores,
the Lusatian Mountains,
and the loftier Bohemian Massif, 
its conspicuous brickwork,
arboreal highlands, 
and abundant marble creations 
from which she,
she believes,
she will feed,
and live,
for a time.
 
John L. Stanizzi

John’s books are Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Chants, High Tide-Ebb Tide, Four Bits, Hallelujah Time,  POND, Tree That Lights the Way Home, Sundowning, Feathers and Bones, and SEE. His new collection, Entra La Notte, will be out next month.Johnnie is a former New England Poet of the Year, a Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and he received a Fellowship in CNF in 2021 from the CT. Office of Arts, Culture, & Diversity. He took first place in The Ekphrastic Review’s Ekphrastic Marathon in 2024. He is currently among the poets nominated for the honour of Connecticut Poet Laureate.
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