Distant thunder.
Dead wind.
Light, greenish-grey.
Thunderheads rumbling.
Empty street.
Branches swaying.
Then a thunderbolt.
A few big rain drops.
More thunder.
Torrential rain.
Wild wind.
Zero visibility.
Thunder overhead.
Gusting space.
Blowing leaves.
Full motion in the trees.
Vast screen of mist.
Thunder diminishing.
Then louder.
Then diminished.
Rain letting up.
Wind circling back.
A last thunderclap.
Sunbeams breaking.
Rain from the trees.
Enchanted life.
Poetry
Washing a Manuscript
Water penetrates pigment.
The music washes away.
Words sink to the lakebed.
Trees are growing in silt.
Faces appear and change.
Someone dead in a book
Reappears in the rain.
We tremble at a touch.
Leaves tremble at a touch.
Hate doesn’t die; people die.
Flood and fire/ fire and flood.
Our Saviour on a cypress.
Branches shake without wind.
Bird reflections surface.
Sentences spill into water.
The watering can is filled.
Drops engrave stone.
The shipwreck is home.
Fish arrange themselves.
The membrane swims.
Love and suffering are one.
A book opens to ice fields.
A poem is under glass.
Mirrors read their erosion
But dream like the sea.
Without the sun I am silent.
Without the moon I am still.
The manuscript is washed.
The actors are ready.
An audience assembles.
The first lines are silent.
The last are written first.
Hiroshima 2018
Places of great horror have the same silence.
It gets fused into the air
Like transparencies of sound, like empty speeches,
Or the half-life of Ground Zero.
It is like a fire that pierces the eyes that see it.
It fills you to the bone. It fills every stone.
It doesn’t matter how long ago,
It’s still happening in Hiroshima.
Enola Gays are flying above the city,
Pilots sighting T-shaped bridges,
The first nuclear bomb dropping…
Compound firestorms incinerating the city,
Becoming ash and cloud and gale-force wind
Like giant angelic beings with blazing wings,
Setting the fires on fire as they pass.
People walking under black rain
Wear the rags of their own melting flesh.
Others have no skin
But seem anatomies spilling tears.
Others, blind, wander nightmare ruins–
And you are one of them,
Drinking in the radiation,
Soaked in their suffering,
Brother and sister to them all,
You are innocent, free to leave,
Though collapsing winds
Draw you back to a burning center.
That’s where we all are.
The Waterwheel
For long spells the flour mill lay closed
And the waterwheel would be overrun
By morning glories,
Even anchored by the vines,
Like a wreath for the funeral of the sun.
Other times I thought the wheel
Turned imperceptibly
Like a seasonal clock
Entangled by its own reflection
In the sunken mirrors of the earth.
For all we know another wheel
Turns the wheel;
Another sun inside the sun
Outlasts the waterwheel
And the bread of dumb flesh,
Grinding the flour of morning glories
Beyond the millstone,
Beautiful as a second coming
That never arrives.
Ink Wash
fogdom isn’t the absence of clarity
it is a walking suspension of disbelief
blankness in every direction
snow melting into cloud
granular fog setting like hushed static
a few mental brushstrokes
and I brush in what’s erased
deer crossing highways
old apple trees from childhood
first love vanishing in the void
the incompleteness of everything
blending with the saturation
adds such sadness to this picture
Origins
Trees walk out to sea,
Waters encircle them like floating barrels.
Tall mastheads with green sails cross the sun.
Thick lateral roots act as rudders.
The trees plunge in rogue waves
And trim sails, following a tree star.
Barely visible now, cargo birds break free,
Clouds of them on the horizon.
The last tree to cross,
Branches brushing the backs of elephants.
Earth Facts
Atrocities of the autopsy table,
Cutting a corpse from its roots,
First incision to undergrowth.
Could identity be separated
From earth’s long anonymity?
Let’s examine integration
Before extracting information
From an eco-system and deep self
Confounded with the same evil.
In the seasons of a forest
Time of death is natural duration
Accumulating burial in absence.
Doctors dissect a living death.
They pick over a wild garden
And dance round a green fire.
With the irrigation of the remains
All hands are stained with dead inquiry.
The Angel
When the Angel enters your room
Language describes itself,
Like a river of silt growing clear.
When the Angel enters your room
Your sadness is lifted
And desperation delivered.
When the Angel is beside you
The light in your room
Is set ablaze by a rational fire.
When the Angel is near
Love is the body of love
That casts the shadow of love.
When the Angel is at your window
The light embraces you
With the space it creates.
When the Angel is at the door
You’re confirmed to a place
Rendered divine in its place.
When the Angel touches you
Your senses know the suns
They mirror in the warmth of the sun.
When the Angel comes by night
You see how the stars
Bestow the gift of each other’s gift.
What is a poet
The first to walk across a snowfall
To recognize Eden
Speak the country of silence
Cast spells against time
Resolve decay
Make multiple heart donations
Practice empathy
And symmetrical peacemaking
Craft things unseen
List the clouds
Condense night
Love the shadow of a lover
Accept death as revision
Maria Theresa Ala
Maria Theresa Ala of New York Harbor
The ocean crashes back
Beautiful Maria Theresa of Ellis Island
History crashes back
Mother of exiles enlightening the world
Maria Theresa of passenger ships
Adrift in the absence of time
Maria Theresa Ala of America
Vineyards spring up in song
Maria Theresa America
Immigrant of echoes and incarnations
Brooklyn Maria Theresa Ala
Mother of strong mothers of freedom
Salvatore Ala 