My wife hands me a crow feather
She picked up on the road.
Now she’s part of my totem.
Between her hand and mine
The feather seems to float
Like time in mid-summer.
The feather retains the full sun
That first shone on it in flight.
Thirty years of marriage
Have flown by like a mirage.
I thank her for the feather.
She feeds my spirit with wings.
Month: September 2019
“The Empty Spirit in Empty Space” Wallace Stevens
for Eugene McNamara
Dear Gene, I regret not seeing you,
Not bringing poetry to your door
Like a “basket of shadows,”
An image of mine you admired.
Looking at your photograph
With all my heart I am sorry
And say a last goodbye, old friend,
With your American poetry
On the tip of your tongue,
Your Dillinger derringer wit
And streetwise Chicago grit
And the branches in the window
Tracing their delicate lines
In the space of our magical changes.
Granada II
Granada, gypsy dream weaver
Strumming guitars
For Claudia La Debla’s dance.
I’ve fallen under her spell,
Her every expression a fantasy,
My song lost in her drama.
Granada, wine-stained stones
Of drunken nights.
Woman that waves the fan
Of her painted hand.
I dream her Flamenco fire
Stamping down roses.
I kiss the death of her mouth.
Pomegranate, her secret destroys me.
Granada, city of adoring poets,
Of ageless sun and blood–
I’d give you everything
For the jasmine drifting
Through Lorca’s door.
Philosophers’ Stone
for Bob Pinto
The day my professor died
I found this stone.
It stood out from the others.
The stone that others reject
Becomes my cornerstone,
The first matter of all things.
It’s a good stone, full of questions,
A complete mystery,
And sometimes its own answer.
Salvatore Ala 