Salvatore Ala

We spoke wine-press "purple words"
Blending with wine-makers' voices
Splashing purple across work floors.
...

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.
...

I could not save the final shot.
It flew beyond mind and body;
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The best thing about fishing with dad
Was not catching anything all day
And yet going home together fished out,
With more fish stories and time shared
...

Perhaps I should learn a language
And speak to my wife
In elementary phrases
Like her elementary piano chords.
...

...

After the first wave we step outside.
Predawn floods the arena
Of the mind like another drug.
The lake is like a gray plane.
...

Keep me awake one minute beyond those I love
That I may guide them safely through dark doors
Keep me awake one minute beyond first light
Like an after-image of light eternal
...

My America is all Detroit, Motown, dancing in the streets, my girl,

Tropical heat waves and what becomes of the brokenhearted after a riot.
...

Means something grows equal
An equation is coming into being
Parallel lines move off into infinity
And at the vanishing point
...

For long spells the flour mill closed
And the waterwheel would be overrun
By morning glories,
Even anchored by the vines,
...

All our different languages
Yet trees, grasses and stones
Have the same vocabulary;
Blowing snow and mountain pines
...

In a dream her husband appears
Younger than the day they met.
In a dream he touches his wife
With wordless love in his heart.
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Dead elephants crumble like cubist mud.
Staghorn coral or antlers of a massive cull.
The last albatrosses rime like ancient mariners.
Tigers pace back and forth in cages of extinction.
...

Cottonwood flying
like a snowfall
like a wilderness
planting all its seeds
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When music is silent
People are dancing
When people are silent
Blight is consensual
...

A deer family plunging across rapids
In a drama intensified by a storm surge

Osprey awash in spray
...

There's one piano note my daughter plays
it's like a pearl has appeared in the room
quasi niente like sunshine on water
ineffably tender like a white rose at the limit of its stem
...

I've dad's key to the barbershop.
I keep it on my key ring
for its wistful returns.
It opens the barbershop door.
...

Juneau, Alaska


I washed my heart
...