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Editor's Note

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Ah yes!  The night  What is there so extraordinary about...Qua sky...it begins  to lose its effulgence, to grow pale, pale, ever a little paler, a little paler until       pppfff! finished! it comes to rest. But -- but behind this veil of gentleness and peace, night is charging and will  burst upon us pop! like  that! just  when we least expect it. That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.                                                                                                                                                Pozzo -- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
                        
 
night branches hung with raindrops
whole notes
along an improvised staff
 
a metronome in the eaves
tracing the hollows
of silence
 
and a lamp
a tiny sunrise
to brighten the melody
 
*
 
the moon sets
and clouds
begin to unravel
like old coarse rags
 
*
 
daybreak
attaches shadows
dark breathing shapes
to the sleepers
dreaming toward morning
 
it is that light
that civilizes the waking
covering their eyes
with the bones
of their hands
 
*
 
a concert of waxwings   
where the offering of daybreak
whitens the road
 
their music sewn
into the branches
like lace
so delicate
it cannot be seen

 
*
 
outside that window
intricate fluttering things  
stare in
 
*
 
morning haze        
with its wings of light
against the dark
 
and from beneath the pale ocean
flowers to fill the clouded dawn
 
*
 
in the frail dawn
the heart's
slight cautious dance
 
*
 
brightness
 
brightness
 
a tremor of light
silver and scarce
on the bewildered horizon
 
*
 
bless the cat
stalking in the stark white
of the sturgeon moon
 
and the highway
beginning to dry
beneath a pale rainbow
 
and the birds
which come as we sleep
and rise
from the river-brush
a negative of the stars
drawn from the undergrowth
by dawn
 
and bless
the coming warmth
fill your pockets with it
and wait
for the next
chaotic blue hour

John L. Stanizzi's first book, Ecstasy Among Ghosts, was published by Antrim House Books (www.antrimhousebooks.com). His second book, Sleepwalking,  came out last month. The New York Quarterly, Tar RiverPoetry, and Wild Goose Review have published new poems. He has also published in  Passages North, The Spoon River Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Connecticut River Review, Stone Country, The Larcom Review, Rainbow Curve, The White Pelican Review, and others. He was also selected as New England Poet of the Year (1998) by the New England Association of Teachers of English, is a former poet in residence at Manchester Community College and Middletown Public Schools, and has received two Pushcart nominations. Most recently, Garrison Keilor featured two of his poems on the December 17 and 19, 2008, editions of The Writer's Almanac.