When you find a dead body
Your fingers turn to ice
They reach down through the earth
And pick rocks from the quarrel
Between life and death
When you touch a dead body
And feel for a pulse
Your hand slips through
The moment the heart stopped
Down into the depths of timelessness
Then you are wordless
And stand in the cold
Exchanging glances
With the ancient face of silence
April
Cruel King of cold and warmth colliding.
Water running down the stone
As though from Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral
To the last drop, the last holy shine.
April’s clouds confound the concert.
If not the weeks, the days are unkind.
The birds sing in a dead wind
Like a recording of the first flowers.
Homeless, he goes with an overcoat and violin,
The cruel king of the Calendar
Who could never be any other,
Marching to murder May, his own brother.
Spring
The fly at my window
turned into a bird
then a lizard
then an eye
holding me hostage
to change
After Voznesensky
The idea of a storm began forming in the clouds.
The idea of rain saw its reflection in a mirror.
The idea of wind spread all its wings at once.
The idea of thunder arrived before the sound.
A storm did form and the idea was swept away.
Rain did fall and shattered its reflection.
Wind folded its wings and came to rest again.
The mind survived the thunder and the idea.
The Law of Creation
A deer runs through a spring thicket
and emerges green as the young leaves
Raindrops kiss the flowers—
and birds burst out
A stream of water suns itself
on a rock, then slips away alive
Bats shake loose from a flash of lightning
when the sky cracks open its caves
Along the streambed frogs gather
from the thawing strings of ice
Even insects hesitate—
then step out of their own bones
No place to hide from creation
when creation calls you home
Garage Works
Between hammer and anvil
demons send out sparks
The acetylene tank’s blue flame
is the eye of the almighty
The rust of old parts
or the blood of the machine
An oil spill on the floor
or an exhausted rainbow
The heat of the engine
the cold of the season
The revving of an engine
clears carbon from the heart
A transmission job
moves the day along
A cut or a burn
and a bruise for the wages
When the car’s on the lift
it’s a poem in a mirror
The Tears of God
He had seen too much
To trust his eyes
So he removed them
And held them in his hands
He could see tears falling
From the face of God
He could drown
In the salt of everything
He returned his eyes
To their dark chambers
And closed them forever
The tears of God
Sealed inside as in vials
Seeing the Light
In a mountaintop cathedral
The white candles are bleeding
The red candles are weeping
Pilgrims arrive from all parts
To experience the miraculous
Yet none see the light
Though it burns before their eyes
Wholesale
After unloading trailers
we cut open the last watermelons
like they were green suns
brimming with sweet water.
After loading trucks
with peaches for market
we picked a basket
of sunset for ourselves.
After carrying
cases of grapes,
I wore a crown of bees
and a sash of grape leaves.
After filling bins
with oranges
sunlight gushed forth
from the warehouse door.
Horses at Night
“that strange gratuity of horses.”
Hart Crane
I stop as the horses thunder past,
Heart lifted with them, breath caught.
Horses made of moons and meadows
Chase the wind
At the speed of their own black light,
Or glowing, gleaming chestnut
Coming out of fog,
Following the sun to its stable of fire.
Space and earth leap in their strides;
Their hooves storm like hailstones.
The mist clears in their wake
Like the mane of a lightning bolt
Over the trembling pasture.
A white horse turns to shadow,
Galloping over the salt of stars.
Then they’re gone,
Like night into deeper night—
Yet their fire lingers behind my eyes.
Salvatore Ala 