The heart must be bigger than an ocean
it must be bigger than the sun
it must wear elephant tusks
and with heavy legs
march slowly toward its own extinction
Poetry
The Imaged Word
I was daydreaming about the snow
when a line from Emerson
interrupted my waking dream,
“the frolic architecture of the snow.”
Thinking about that lovely image,
seeing the snow, remembering his poem,
his words were a moving picture
trapped in motionless cold.
The Immortals
Beethoven played by so many hands
He is everlasting applause.
Da Vinci in so many eyes
He still paints upon humanity.
Shakespeare on so many lips
He has kissed the fleeting light.
Handel in so many churches
He is the stained glass of the soul.
Dickens in so many living rooms
He has become the tree of charity.
Van Gogh on so many walls
He is a window on the night sky.
Dostoevsky in so many minds
He is a book without pages.
Mozart in so many ears
He’s been memorized by air.
The Moment of Vision
I woke up to snow on every rooftop.
How far I must have travelled
to be in the dream of this moment.
The Empty Page
It’s not my anxiety; it’s the anxiety that’s out there.
It crept through my cracks and opened my doors.
It’s not my emptiness; it belongs to them.
I’m not staring at a blank page, but a blank state.
An Elemental Blessing
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
A Lyrical Miracle
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.
Stillness in a Window
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
Inclusion
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.
Wings of November
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.
Salvatore Ala 