A country doctor commencing on a cure
A chiropractor stretching the spine of his patient
An ornithologist listening for a particular bird
The dance of lonely awkward people
Children in a schoolyard making friends
Workers striking synchronous hammers
Mice euthanized in a whirlpool of squeals
Boxers wanting to lose the fight they’re winning
The glass of winter dawn shattering
Doors opening on the ringing of time
An avalanche burying the mountainside
A teardrop doing somersaults
Bells learning to cooperate in limited space
The concentration of a prisoner
Chiseling into a wall of silence
A jeweler cutting facets of pure sound
A strongbox opening on a combination that keeps locking it
Poetry
Another Night at the Opera
At the sickbed of romance
The famous tenor split his pants,
The bodice of the soprano burst,
Letting air out of her aria first…
Tonight seven cell phones,
Twelve bleepers, sixteen coughs,
Forty yawns and eleven sneezes,
Accompanied by gassy breezes,
Joined the hissing, boos and jeers
Amid the music of the spheres.
When the mezzo-soprano began to trill,
Half the mezzanine took ill;
And the basso singing solo
Fell flat on his profondo.
Tonight the chorus was in chaos
When the andante lost its pathos
And the allegro lagged along
Far behind both act and song.
Even the conductor was confused
When the composer left bemused,
And the librettist wrote a letter:
“The opera could not be better—
Save for the flautist blowing Rigoletto,
Found toying with his piccoletto.”
Unloading Watermelons
It took three men and three boys
All day to unload four thousand jumbo watermelons
Off two eighteen-wheelers that had just come up
From a watermelon patch in Georgia.
By the end of the day they were so heavy
You couldn’t feel your hands,
But we dropped fifteen out of that many.
For the first time I was working with men.
The men sang Italian folk songs
As they heaved into the load of melons
And I worked to the rhythm of their rough voices.
Nothing quite so red and wet and cool
As a cracked open watermelon on a summer day.
So hard and green a shell
To hold that much water and light,
Hot on the outside from the growing days in the field
To the heat of this day in our hands,
Their cool waters quenched our thirst,
They were both our bread and drink.
What sweet pollens of sunset
Summer spreads upon the wind;
Flowers from which swell this immense fruit,
Red honey in a hive of black bees.
On the bus home my body slept.
My fingers were smooth as the fine sand
On the rinds of the melons.
All night I was like a vine and my head was growing.
Homage to Pablo Neruda
Proprietor of a traveling bazaar
Of potent elixirs strained from jungles,
Vials in which rivers rage, flasks of cloud,
The granite voices of Macchu Picchu;
And impure things: wheel ruts, blood and semen,
The severed heads of dictators,
Letters from kings, propaganda;
An earthflow of love poems; and elemental things:
Lemons, artichokes, melons and salt;
Also magic potions, locks of hair,
Moonlight fossilized in stone, emeralds
From the mines of Columbia; snake skins,
Ports of call, arrivals, departures…
Lastly, Chile, like a child’s model,
Raised by the whale spine of the Andes,
With its copper-colored people,
Their stone flute music of mountain mist,
Their poverty and dignity…
Your human cry of the human market.
Fishing with my Father
I could fish for hours,
Lose myself in a marsh
Carried by giant carp,
A dragonfly hook its shadow on my eye
And guide me back to my surprised self.
Fishing in silence beside my father,
I would glance up at him,
Catching the fishes that got away,
Years there lost in him,
A sadness inseparable from living.
I caught once, his fish reflection,
Sinking below the surface.
Ala
A name so light you hear it twice,
Like a wing it flies from having been said,
And is buried in the fall the all…
A sad name long on alacrity,
Life lived as though alated,
Alarmed by my alalia and assassin’s dagger…
Abecedarian of homeroom attendance,
Learning the alphabet of experience
And losing a language in alienation.
Almost suffering from aeriality,
Like twin sisters separated at birth,
Always missing each other by a breath.
Ala: alias Allah, Alaq and Ahala…
Last seen riding a butterfly;
Alas, vanishing à la bonne heure.
The Last Lesson
in memory of Homer Plante
Didn’t the prosody present a paradox,
Our voices in voiceless meter,
Our perceived ideal deceived,
Ashes in the lamp that was glowing?
Didn’t the sense seem fleeting
And it was only ever our feeling
For the heartbeat of correspondence,
The lived thing on a dead page?
After attending to externals
We began with inner sense.
Counting every measure
We saw clearer to a center.
We placed a shadow on a shore
Of eternal whisperings,
And drew a line in our minds
Like the footsteps of Ozymandias…
Halcyon Days
for my wife
Halcyon mornings can save a marriage.
The glittering lake is level to the bright land,
Blue is suffused with the stillness of sand
As we breathe air from another realm
And our senses waken unaware.
Even in distraction and despair
We are spellbound by the silence,
Inundated by a placid flood of heat and light,
Permeated by quiescence,
The children playing, as in a lakeside painting,
Pacified by a powerful calm.
All is quiet in us, our vows unvoiced,
Arguments overwhelmed and soundless as the shore,
Lulled by tranquilizing hours
Far from chaos and confrontation,
Healed in respite of all turbulence and storms.
Natural Magic
I peel a red apple
Savoring the white rose
Hidden in the fruit.
I crush almonds
And see a liquid flower
Blossom in water.
I roast almonds
And the air is wood-scented
As a wine cellar.
I pour red wine
And the apple is whole.
Ring Boxes
With miniature gold latches
Engraved for treasury doors of diminutives,
You open them after many years,
All that’s left are rings of dust, a teardrop of light.
All that’s left is a tiny cleft,
A soft bed where a pearl was bled,
And a mirror under the lid
Which opens like its own jewel.
Salvatore Ala 