America, my friend and neighbor,
Reopening the wounds of Christ,
The scar under the scar that never heals,
The festering of your own infection,
An inflammation inflamed.
Clearly, you’re the hate behind hate,
Masklessness masking your mask
Of pride and vulnerability,
With a burn under your burn,
With darkness in your darkness
And falsehoods covering falsehoods…
America, who among you
Can see and say the whole truth?
Who will cross the racial divide?
Who will be the dove of light?
Who will carry the olive branch
Into the battleground of your own streets?
Hope
Musicians in the House
Fill the air with music and talk,
A little wine and later, Bach.
Lulls punctuated by counterpoint
Are their own musical midpoint.
It is like love at prima vista,
Music my first and ever lingua.
I listen to their close voicing
Without myself at all digressing
Into the old man, the angry man,
The bitter and forgotten sideman.
Listening cries angels in my ears
And piano runs melt my fears
And the trumpet my daughter plays
Distills the light with moon rays
And the changes they are blowing
Are the real future we are sowing.
Salvatore Ala 