Just this mild mid-October mid-afternoon moment,
A few yellow-gold leaves swaying,
Touching the stillness, testing it,
And glowing in the most exquisite light.
An azure sky that could have been painted
By some Renaissance master,
Inviting change to enter eternity’s door,
Mingling the heavens with our soil.
If the choice was mine I’d choose this moment
As my forever moment…
I’d make this perfection my last.
In the meantime, I’ll extend my stay
A moment longer, a moment longer,
And saturate the canvas with gratitude.
Author: Salvatore Ala
On St. James and the Camino
St. James’ body on a boat of stone
Set sail over a sea of stars,
Held aloft by an angel and spirited to Spain,
To Padrón, the stone pillar still exists,
Part of the main mast of the stone boat
And a miraculous assertion in stone.
St. James, with staff and scallop shells,
Traversing fields of stars, as in heaven.
What is more miraculous
Than a legend become pilgrimage?
From person to person, spirit to spirit,
Whether they know or not feel it,
For over a thousand years
A trace of his faith has crossed their faces
And the road to Santiago opened
To what is most frail in us, most hopeful.
October Picture Gallery
My ash and walnut trees are dotted with gold
The light takes a step into a garden shed
Late sunflowers burst into blue
Like the eyes of a rustic sun
Reeds gone to seed blur the lakeside
And poplars shimmer in a stream
When leaves all gust as one
There’s a scream on the face of change
With strewn leaves and sticks
Swirling in intricate interweaving lines
October’s hollows are haunted by owls
Like a skeleton answering a telephone
A mossy statue in rain with red roses
Replete with sad beauty and without meaning
What Sweet Thoughts were Thine
RIP to my friend John Barlow
We met in creative writing class
He was Blake and Shelley
I was Coleridge and Keats
The vanity of poets in their youth
After class we’d go to the third floor
Of Memorial Hall and share a joint
Then we’d go for coffee or drinks
And discuss poetry all night
I saw him as a man and bird
With ever so copious a song
And profuse strains of art
As we danced with creativity
Mortality and beauty
Living only for those visions
That enrich vision and outlive us all
September
Never so grateful as under sapphire skies
What with apple trucks and golden sunsets
If the gods can cleanse themselves in field fires
Why can’t I
Even though builders drive in their year-nails
There’s a lingering to the changes
A reluctance in the leaves to fall
And in the birds who depart
In the conservation of angular momentum
A slowness to the glowing hours
Almost like a space passes into autumn
Into which we turn a vacant look
Basket of Shadows
What’s in your basket of shadows?
I have fruit from the orchard
And tomatoes from the garden.
Where are you going
With your basket of shadows?
To feed the hungry and heal the sick.
What else do you have
In your basket of shadows?
I have fresh bread and fish
And a multitude of miracles.
Can we look in your basket?
You may look, but to nonbelievers
The basket will appear empty.
They looked, it was empty and full,
It was a basket of shadows.
Enduring the Great Light
Light shines in darkness.
Can darkness overcome light?
Is night the birthplace of dreams
Or the grave of nature?
Let’s hope for the big death,
For all the lamps to burn out,
For the annihilation of ego
And the pure, deep, sunless
Entirety of death’s blessing
In ever-during darkness
Comfort us to forget
What we have here seen and known,
Here crafted and endured.
The nightmare of consciousness
To live through it again.
The Image of Thought
It’s in the blankness,
In the problem life poses,
In the fear and anxiety,
In the downpour, in formlessness,
Ripples upon water,
Buried under snow,
Both near and far,
Upon the plain of being,
Itself an illusion,
Like a mirror image,
A rolling mist,
A vanishing line of geese
And any afterthought.
Grackle Migration
Just experienced a plague of grackles
On their way to Texas and Florida
Countless flying through the woodlot
Landing in trees and on rooftops
The air creaking with grackle-calls
The flight of dozens of black wings
Their shimmering iridescence
The bronzed and purple ones
With the sun in their eyes
Like they’d come from night
To turn the earth in flight
Their energy and abundance
Rousing me to change and delight
August
Something about August guts me
The end of summer the start of school
Change imperceptible tranquil days
The carnivals having come now gone
The light of endless afternoons
Weeds grown wild and sturgeon moons
Enliven creation through night’s duration
In August we open our cellar door
We splash wine across the floor
The harvest begun we couldn’t ask for more
Behind the soldier month the bulwark
The moving immensity of this eternal life
Salvatore Ala 