Salvatore Ala Poems

The earth's summer
a furiously burning mother-fire
at a touch of frost the sun shatters
night harvests stars from the soil
...

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.
...

After the first beheading, hope was severed like a limb.

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

Ellis Island

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

A country doctor commencing on a cure.
A chiropractor stretching the spine of his patient.
An ornithologist listening for particular birds.
The dance of lonely awkward people.
...

For orange jewelweed one flower
Is still a flowering plant

The youngest deer of the forest
...

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

Osprey awash in spray
...

Head without a will of its own,
Blindfolded and bandaged eyes
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I could fish for hours,
Lose myself in a marsh
...

Neither complete reason or revelation
But falling in love again when we can't help it
Ambient composite blue transparent to the stars
Between dawn and sunrise sunset and dusk
...