31 May Three-Quarters of the Way to Nowhere by Geoffrey Gatza
A bright idea to stall
The onset of winter.
The days were shortening.
The cold air of autumn began
Calling the trees to prepare for dormancy.
Before falling, leaves return nutrients
And sugars to the tree, which stores
Them in the branches and trunk
For use in the spring. But what if,
I thought, they did not fall.
When the leaves changed color,
As they do every year at this time,
I went to the hardware store.
Talked to the son of the owner
Who died last year, what kind of glue
Would he have used? I wanted the leaves
To stay put. He showed me bonding solutions,
Precision adhesives, and stronghold glues.
The one I bought would, he assured, hold
God Himself in a permanent bond, should I
Meet him on the jobsite, and I find the need.
On my ladder. A big can of epoxy, brush in hand.
This is an art in its own right. Magic happens
Between the glue and the leaf. Each orange leaf,
Each red leaf, each yellow leaf held taut
By a force God Himself cannot break.
The shining leaves, dripping amber,
Might flutter like an open book in the winter wind.
Might damage the tree from the ice but will not.
In my way I can do all things until springtime,
When the garden grows again like a lion’s den,
Which, sometimes, is a good place to hide.
About the Poet
Geoffrey Gatza is the author of the poetry collections The House of Forgetting (2012), Apollo: A Conceptual Poem (2014), A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees (2018) and Self Geofferential (2025). Self-Geoffrential was recently long-listed for The Big Other Book Award. This poem appears in his new chapbook The Night is a Bridge (2026), published by Silver Locust Press.
Gatza’s poems have been published in anthologies, as well as magazines and journals including Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, The Pickled Body, Peach Mag, Tupelo Quarterly and various others. His play on Marcel Duchamp was staged in an art installation in Philadelphia and performed in New York City.
He is also an award-winning editor, publisher and poet, the driving force behind BlazeVOX, an independent press located in Buffalo, NY, specializing in innovative fictions and contemporary poetry.
Related Event
-
- The Literary Café Series at the CFI will feature poet Geoffrey Gatza reading from his work on Wednesday, June 3rd at 7:30 p.m. at The Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd. in Amherst, NY. Additional sign-up reading slots will be available. Ryki Zuckerman is the curator and host of the series. The event is free and open to the public.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.