M. J. IUPPA - HAWTHORN TREE

M.J. Iuppa  is Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College, and is a part time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport.  Most recently, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017. She and her husband Peter Tonery lives on a small farm where they have been practicing organic food sustainability for the past 16 years.
Thank you for giving my work a showcase.

 HAWTHORN TREE
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Down a summer road, where fields begin to green in rows  
rising in the slight ripple of land that’s not easy to keep neat
 
and even, a hawthorn tree, four generations old, stands dripping
with the day’s rain— stands stiffly in the chill of evening
 
coming on— its shadow stretching in its wind-blown shape
towards the homestead that once thrived in this landscape
 
that has realigned with nature, leaving the discovery of
broken footings— cobble house and barn— to one’s
 
imagination of what was here not so long ago— a place
lost among the thick tangle of sweet grape—a place left
 
to the whispers of many bees.