Like summer frozen in winter
Summer light on a winter day.
It looks warm and masquerades
As gentles breezes with an icy edge.
It is summer somewhere else
Wafting through our zero weather.
It is bright enough for memory
To cast the shade of summer
And thaw coldness for a spell,
Awakening the atmosphere
For what transience dispels.
Some life enters the skin.
Some memento melts the air.
The glow lingers into dusk
Wearing a garment of snow.
The fullest hour floods with light.
Month: December 2019
Mathematical Fallacy
for Michael
In my sixtieth autumn, insoluble leaves,
Like more numbers than moonlight can double,
Like migrations unnumbered by time,
Like a windfall of division equal to shade,
Like a rainfall washing out its arithmetic.
In my sixtieth autumn, insoluble leaves,
Like the natural numbers of the sun,
Like the reckoning of the cold,
Like decimals enumerating the wind.
In my sixtieth autumn, the aftermath,
Impossible computations of fate,
False answers and recalculations,
Estimated losses and constant of love
On the road to my own insoluble solution.
Salvatore Ala 