As they carve at our tall rotting maple
I stand outside to watch the old tree die.
One tree cutter said that a felled tree
Gives off its essence and an aura lingers.
As branches fall, a sapling grove springs up,
Light blooms green, air so pungent
With core wood I feel more alive;
And though the tree is nearly down,
I look up it towers above the pines,
Ragged crown of blue and silver leaves
Before darkness covers my tree of light.
For weeks I’ve not been well but refuse a doctor.
For weeks I’ve been unhappy but refuse the past.
For weeks I’ve misread a line of poetry
As “the aging of the dead” and not “the aging and the dead.”
For weeks I’ve been depressed
Thinking the dead grow older. One misreading
And I have wasted a thousand years in eternity.
Washington, D.C.
Marble is sticking to wet leaves,
Walls are dripping from ivy,
Pillars drift and become as trees,
Wide rivers of reflected light drown the streets,
The earth rises and the city is less real,
Monuments and memorials
Cling lightly to the air.
Behind the Greek facade
A sea, as in the pages of Homer,
A sea within words,
Within windows and walls.
Our reflections on the glass
Of a transparency
Between extinction and captivity.
When you never leave the place
Where you were born,
You are more like a tree than a person.
An old person, an old tree,
With roots deep under the city.
And when you’re with others
Who talk of exotic lands,
You remain silent,
Feeling the strong winds of fate
Moving through your crown of leaves,
From every direction
Space entering your branches.
And they who are speaking
Become more and more distant,
The voices of birds
Departing for southern skies.
Halcyon mornings can save a marriage,
The glittering lake is level to the bright land,
Blue is suffused with the stillness of sand
As we breathe air from another realm
And our senses waken unaware.
Even in distraction and despair
We are spellbound by the silence,
Inundated by a placid flood of heat and light,
Permeated by quiescence,
The children playing, as in a lakeside painting,
Pacified by a powerful calm.
All is quiet in us, our vows unvoiced,
Arguments overwhelmed and soundless as the shore,
Lulled by tranquilized hours
Far from chaos and confrontation,
Healed in respite of all turbulence and storms.
My childhood was a sea voyage,
A barbershop and the ringing of a mandolin,
Summer stars through grape leaves,
Prickly pears and fig trees,
Snails creeping out of straw baskets,
Silence and violence.
My childhood was like a stuffed baby alligator
That swims in the swamp of memory,
Twice haunted twin sisters
Who survived a plane crash,
Playing cards scattered on a table,
Voices shoveling graves.
My childhood was a broken accordion,
A wine-press pressing the sun,
Chinese faces at the market,
Hunting rifles behind glass,
Dried eel at the fish store,
Rain of motherless time.
Salvatore Ala 