The water is replenished
The blood quickened
Spirit is reanimated
Aging wine imagines
The streams are alive
The rivers are flowing
The ocean is its waves
Hope is reborn
Thoughts are watered
Flowers their coalescing
The forest deepens
Love is refreshed
Air is resurrected
Wind enlivened
Parks are abloom
Peace is pleased
From what I know about space,
its rock gardens of unimaginable distances,
the speeds at which the immense occurs,
fires where blackness burns,
ice where desolations dwell,
the curve that confounds space and time
and gravity reaching out like God’s arm
to hold the earth in folds of cloud,
we, on this lyrical miracle of a planet,
smiling at the most distant flame
in the blue blackness of falling night,
fly through the briefest of measures,
love in a breath and then we are gone,
thankful for the fire and ice,
for any moment of earthly reflection,
for the children of our children,
the missing mass of being absent at home.
The last winter leaves
cling to the clock’s ticking arms
The wind is equipollent
and straightens what it bends
The sky is like a cue ball
resting on a pool table
A bird dreams
on its familiar branch
Then I notice—there is no window
only a mirror I’m looking through
So quietly
change moves
and is unchanged
Consciousness is always opening.
A door opening, a window opening,
even the wind opening.
Sometimes you can feel
that opening on your face
like the warmth of morning light.
Sometimes it overlooks a vast plain,
and other times it’s inside you
like well-being breathing peace.
Awareness is all that happens,
even what we do not see.
Clouds form and dissolve,
the light shines through.
That’s why being is always opening,
to include us in what never ends.
The first junco
on my windowsill:
snow’s not far behind.
The woodpeckers
are busy today.
It must mean something
even if we don’t know the language.
A blue jay jumps on the fence,
and preens against russet leaves.
A cloud of grackles
open a hole in the sky
through which to migrate.
A saw-whet owl
drops down from a tree,
lamps on the path.
We float above Roman mosaics
on a narrow walkway
that drifts through time,
and see Hercules, the Cyclops,
the bikini girls in mid-leap and turn,
the corridor of the great hunt,
captured animals
straining against their chains,
and, on a sea of stone,
a cargo ship setting off to Rome.
All the figures come to light,
half myth, half dream,
all shadows
floating between worlds,
just as we are floating
and part of theirs,
and our own
continuous unveiling.
Salvatore Ala 