Alma Elegies

The Alma Elegies is set for release from Gaspereau Press on March 5. I've just finished going though the final proofs of the book, and the design and typeset are wonderful. Anyone looking for more information about their spring releases can find them at www.gaspereau.com.

We've had a bit of snow lately, and during the last storm I started work on a new sequence of prose poems. One is printed here. I've long been attracted to the Sufi poets and this poem is in honour of them. There's an old idea that when two or more people are engaged in intense, passionate conversation, "the Friend" is present. Other ideas suggest that when this inner conversation takes place, we create or conjure the Friend between us.

DERVISHES WHIRLING

All night wind blew, making a high whistling sound around
windows and doors. In some places the walk was swept
clean; in others it’s drifted up, little smooth runnels of
abstract sculpture. There are tracks in the snow where
a squirrel ran quickly from one trunk to another, small
notes in all this whiteness.

At my feet, I find a spruce branch with a single brown
cone attached. It is wild as the dark love the Sufis knew,
the seed of thought that carries the thinker to the
edge of the planet. He knows that love and compassion
are what we need to carry us through the darkness
of this world.

For a moment the sun breaks through clouds. Now
it is the sound of lovers waking, light moving in the
eyes of the Friend.

(Copyright 2007, Allan Cooper)