Poetry

Paint by Province

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

(Essex County)

By mixing the sunset
With green farms
And black walnut,
A white horse grazes in a field.

(Cape Breton)

By mingling lake water
With white birch
And yellow leaves,
The sail of the sun floats into view.

(PEI)

By combining lupins
With red soil and green fields
The island sleeps
In the waves of its dreams.

(Chocolate River, New Brunswick)

By amassing sediment
The sun pans for gold
Like an old prospector
Knee-deep in the river.

(Rural Ontario)

By bonding the smell of snow
With wood smoke,
November sets its essence
In your mind.

(Lake Louise, Alberta)

By joining elevation
To compression and water
Mountains wash their faces
In their own turquoise mirrors.

(Gaspe, Quebec)

By linking the St. Lawrence
To an endless watershed
Of blue iris in bloom
Beauty floods the seaway.

Marsh Boardwalk

/ Salvatore Ala / 4 Comments

Hovering above, between, amidst,
Like a boat attached to its own moving pier,
Space swamps you along the boardwalk.
The wind walks at the pace of the reeds.
Light falls on bulrushes and water lilies
Glowing in waters of inevitable wonder.
Every time you return, nature returns tenfold,
Enlarging you, lengthening your shadow,
Seeding your own expansion back to nature.
The marsh never changes, the marsh changes,
The upkeep of the boardwalk is enormous.
No worrying about time on this footpath.
It has all been preserved by the marsh.
It has all been dispersed by the reeds.

Photo by Brigitte Ala

Marsh Boardwalk

Behind the Scenes

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

Novus ordo seclorum

Behind the scenes. Behind the perceptible.
Behind perhaps reality.
How sadly the conspiracy unravels.
After the whirlwind and the fall,
How inadequate the truth that’s revealed.
Is the veil of Isis ever lifted?
Don’t statues wear a mask of stone?
Aren’t photographs sealed by time?
Isn’t that movie obscuring the light?
Because the scene lacks depth
The drama must be in the back.
The “Behind the Scenes” Corporation.
The Eye of Providence, anonymous.
The ruse is clearly visible.
The surface is the storefront.
The mask is its own mask.
A façade is a lasting impression.
The disguised wear disguises.
The undisclosed is uninspired.
The covert appears cabalistic.
Behind the scenes. Behind the perceptible.
Behind perhaps reality.
How repugnant the details of revelation,
Our own failings in the creation.

The Shadow Plant

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

The rain kept me up all night last night,
Probing me with vaccinations
And syringes of endless worry.
Bad enough this pandemic lockdown,
April’s suffered from a virus,
With chills, fever and persistent cough,
Overcast from start to finish.
At least there’s a chance for freedom
In our own small portions of the sun.
I’m holding out for summer
And the healing of its shadow plant.

Easter Prayer

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

Maybe this stillness won’t precede a storm
But open like a door to a wider blue.
Maybe these winds will flatten the curve
And rain sanitize the land.
For all my friends, this hopeful prayer,
From the heart of one to the heart of all and back again.

Cardinal Coloring Book

/ Salvatore Ala / 2 Comments

Though it prefers the tallest branch from which to sing and be seen, and where it is truly cardinal red, these birds can paint the air anywhere. They’re O’Keeffe red, Gorky red, Chagall red… their beaks are dipped in paint. The magic feathers of the cardinal change tone from tree to tree, depending on foliage and light. In flight, they’re flashing red. In shadow, they’re shadow red or cosmos red. Among red leaves or berries, they dye themselves with the light around them. Even their song is red, and so bright you can easily follow the sound to the source. Now that you know you can paint with a bird, open your canvas and fly.

Dual Dialogue on Love

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

Do you remember kisses in the rain?
They washed away in the flood.
Do you remember kissing in snow?
They melted in their own heat.
Do you remember kisses in sand?
They are all in an hour-glass.
Do you remember kisses in mirrors?
They are lost in reflection.

I remember kisses in the rain,
Water was thirsty for your kisses.
I remember kisses in snow,
I kissed snowflakes from your lips.
Do I remember kisses in sand?
I keep them in a shadow box.
Do I remember kisses in mirrors?
Love is the mirror of my mind.

Unfinished River Walk

/ Salvatore Ala / Leave a comment

When the water was low
I walked the riverbed
Down the spine of a fish
Cool airflow guiding me
Over river rock islands
King of a summer river
With crown of sunlight
My thoughts drifting
Into rivers of other days
The faces of people I love
Swam through my mind
Like reflections in fluidity
Born of the river now
Confluent with the current
The scales of my eyes dropped
My childhood returned
Flowed out beyond me
Steeping me in wonder
Laying my feet upon the water
Fish drifted above sandbars
Towing their shadows
Water snakes like wavelets
Were seamlessly absorbed
Mirages of inverted gardens
Whose leaves I touched
In the web of two realms
From the grade of the land
I was sunset bound
Around a deep-banked eddy
Death swirled like branches
And I thought of giving up
Until the river widened
Into meadowland without margins
River grasses swaying
With my own thoughts
In some idyllic weightless
Wetland of buoyancy
And stillness all around
Before a kingfisher pierced
The surface of silence
And the current quickened
Picked up its shallow river
Between steeper banks
And spilled down heavenward
I tracked the river forest
And the sunset took me in
As though I’d reached the end
Of the river in myself
And from where I’d begun
The river was returning