The Front Passing

By John L. Stanizzi

The front passed through last night  
after weeks without rain,  
weeks where the yard lay wounded, 
brittle and withered,  
and the weight of heat was oppressive
on the landscape,  
its shoulders hunched, 
woe-is-me-quitter,  
sure of nothing but its own  
lack of confidence. 

The mugginess bullied everyone, 
making us walk slowly  
back to our seats 
where it shoved us down.  
That is until the front came through.  

No big deal this time; 
on the radar a thin green line  
with one imbedded thunderstorm 
and its red eye. 

Just after dark the first few drops 
hit the parched deck;  
perfume of rain filled the air,  
and the landscape turned itself inside out, 
leaves raised their voices, 
and down the hill  
the silhouette of my neighbor carved in the dusk,
arms above his head and calling out Yes!
And me barefoot on the wet deck,  
calling back in the rain, Yes! 
as the heat, fractured,  
fell into the valley swooning,  
its tail between its legs. 

John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections Ecstasy Among Ghosts (Antrim House), Sleepwalking (Antrim House), Dance Against the Wall (Antrim House), After the Bell (BigTable), Hallelujah Time! (Big Table), High Tide – Ebb Tide (Kelsay Books), Four Bits (Grayson Press), Chants (Cervena Barva), Sundowning Main Street Rag, POND (imspired – UK)), and The Tree That Lights The Way Home (Antrim House). John’s work has been widely published and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, American Life in Poetry, Praxis, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Laurel Review, The Caribbean Writer, Blue Mountain Review, Rust + Moth, Tar River, Poetlore, Rattle, Hawk & Handsaw, Plainsongs, Patterson Literary Review, Potato Soup Journal, and many others. His work has been translated into Italian and appears widely in Italy, including in El Ghibli, The Journal of Italian Translations Bonafini, Poetarium, and others. His translator is the Italian poet, Angela D’Ambra. His nonfiction has been published in Literature and Belief, Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, Adelaide, Scarlet Leaf, Evening Street, Praxis, Potato Soup Journal, The Red Lemon, after the pause, and others. John is the Flash Fiction Editor of Abstract Magazine TV, and he has read at venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others. For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut. He was also a “teaching artist” for the national poetry recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud; he spent a decade with Poetry Out Loud. A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and New England Poet of the Year (1998), John has just been awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction -- 2021 from the Connecticut Office of the Arts for work on his new memoir. He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com.