Stop Motion & Psalm [Crows rustle in the pine out back,]

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Clay Matthews

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Stop Motion

This spirit on the water now hovers

over the darkness; I am moved to speak,

and love pours out like honey and covers

everything I forgive. In hide and seek

you called my name; you found me. Games were bleak

reminders of chance at the end of things;

my words fell like dice. In the garden, week

to week, goldenrod and ragweed, the wings

of an angel shook loose the dust; he brings

up pollen and creates a hologram

of seed, sprout, bud, blossom; yes, friend, it stings

to watch a life play out, but medicine

often comes from poison, and creation

is the creator’s pure animation.

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Psalm [Crows rustle in the pine out back,]

Crows rustle in the pine out back,

only ominous when I let my thoughts wander

down the branches

through the roots

to where a worm wriggles, writhes,

and blindly follows its way.

The grandeur of morning, church bells

and cicadas ringing out

against the heat of July, where once

we sat around a fire, turning beer cans

in our paws and telling stories

about ghosts. So often memories

are like walking into the wrong theater,

or some pornographic advertisement

in the periphery

you never wanted to see.

Cars drive by too fast, the dog

looks up in the tree, and the crows 

fly away to another yard. 

In the beginning,

they beat their wings against the air

like it has committed some terrible offense

against them— some horror.

Soon, the quiet hand

will raise them up, picked 

like dark fruit into the sky.

__________

Clay Matthews howling with anticipation for Halloween.

__________

Clay Matthews has published recently in Arts & Letters, THRUSH, Image, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. His collections are: Superfecta (Ghost Road Press), Runoff (BlazeVOX Books), Pretty, Rooster, and Shore (Cooper Dillon Books), and Four-Way Lug Wrench (Main Street Rag). He resides in Elizabethtown, KY and teaches at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College.

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