Clay Matthews
Miracle on the Bluegrass Parkway
Yesterday on the highway gray clouds
tiled the sky like cobblestone
and the sun dusted their bottoms
with pink and light
and it was like the road was upside down
but everything was right
sort of surreal and holy
even in the midst of so much fear.
God spoke through a little
white space in the corner of it all
and said: look. listen. hush.
So I did. Then it was gone.
I’m telling you
because it’s almost like it never happened.
Love Poem from a Distance
In the sweet by and by there is a river
where I wait for you. A tree grows green
and never withers there, never wants.
Here above I was the light of that fish
darting in fear, rainbowed and shadowed,
you were the wind, or the branch
broken, all of this framed and hanging
in the den of a home where no one
notices anymore. In the end
we will have known that we were one,
after all, fed by the manna of each morning.
So many things I should have wished
to have known sooner.
Still my gratitude journal fills with whispers
of passing days and your name.
Clay Matthews has published in Arts & Letters, THRUSH, The Kenyon Review, 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.
Return to March 2023 Edition
Yesterday on the highway gray clouds
tiled the sky like cobblestone
and the sun dusted their bottoms
with pink and light
and it was like the road was upside down
but everything was right
sort of surreal and holy
even in the midst of so much fear.
God spoke through a little
white space in the corner of it all
and said: look. listen. hush.
So I did. Then it was gone.
I’m telling you
because it’s almost like it never happened.
Love Poem from a Distance
In the sweet by and by there is a river
where I wait for you. A tree grows green
and never withers there, never wants.
Here above I was the light of that fish
darting in fear, rainbowed and shadowed,
you were the wind, or the branch
broken, all of this framed and hanging
in the den of a home where no one
notices anymore. In the end
we will have known that we were one,
after all, fed by the manna of each morning.
So many things I should have wished
to have known sooner.
Still my gratitude journal fills with whispers
of passing days and your name.
Clay Matthews has published in Arts & Letters, THRUSH, The Kenyon Review, 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.
Return to March 2023 Edition