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

After the first wave we step outside.
Predawn floods the arena
Of the mind like another drug.
The lake is like a gray plane.
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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
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My America is all Detroit, Motown, dancing in the streets, my girl,

Tropical heat waves and what becomes of the brokenhearted after a riot.
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Means something grows equal
An equation is coming into being
Parallel lines move off into infinity
And at the vanishing point
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For long spells the flour mill closed
And the waterwheel would be overrun
By morning glories,
Even anchored by the vines,
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All our different languages
Yet trees, grasses and stones
Have the same vocabulary;
Blowing snow and mountain pines
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St.Lawrence River

1
The rivers of the river were moving again.
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Juneau, Alaska


I washed my heart
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I've dad's key to the barbershop.
I keep it on my key ring
for its wistful returns.
It opens the barbershop door.
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Many blue jays from parallel dimensions.
The marshes aloft with birds.
Reed beds in swirling masses.
One swan spread the sun's wings.
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The earth's summer
a furiously burning mother-fire
at a touch of frost the sun shatters
night harvests stars from the soil
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I'll share this photograph of my parents with you.
It's like an old wine overflowing time, still new.
They're eighteen and twenty-four, in their best poor clothes,
Posing under an olive branch on a Roman road.
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After the first beheading, hope was severed like a limb.

After the second, love produced a fountain of blood.
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Ellis Island

Passenger ships slip time in fog,
Their displacement forever in motion.
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