Fishing For Poems
I was asked, what is poetry like?
Perhaps like the northern flicker
riffling the rim of the path, probing
into the wood-chipped, damp earth
for a morsel to maintain its spirit.
No, it’s like fishing.
You set up your intentions
on the bank of the brown page
and cast off into the current
of images and ideas.
then wait
for
inspiration
to nibble your bait, sink
the float and the poem bites.
Now the real struggle begins:
wrestling with imagery, trying
to land the wriggling language
on the bank of verses.
Out of the plopping water
flops the first draft. Disappointingly
underdeveloped.
Poets never exaggerate the catch.
A poem is always ‘this’ big,
often smaller, a tiddler
in the powerful play,
but still something to contribute
to Whitman’s waters.
Something Wonderful This Way Comes
For those sceptics of magic,
those who have forgotten the spells
that sprang from their tongues
they need only go back to Kindergarten.
Listen to Kindergarteners stirring
the trouble, boil and bubble
of those three letter sight words,
words you forgot were once devillish.
To the Kindergartener, every word
is a new prophecy of knowing.
every sentence is a blasted heath,
every book a bloody dagger.
Turning the page is the ambition
that murders minutes, weakens weeks
until, like Macduff, they are redeemed,
victory on their phoneme-creased faces.
A whole book is a kingdom, and
the crowning glory is knowing the next
book is ready for you, that you mastered
the great magic that makes castles.
The Moth
Another distraction caught clattering
around our bathroom moon bulb.
A panicking blur of browns, beiges,
whites. Why don’t we see loved ones
reincarnated in your lucky accident?
You keep the secrets of life, woven
into the world around us, merged
with bark and leaves under the all-
seeing sun, hidden from all eyes.
This moth is slated graveyard grey,
wings of grimacing downcast lines.
I cradle it until it calms, then edge it
out the window with a wishing breath
to find out where our loved one went.
Fuel in La Pine, OR.
Did you vote Biden?
You like $10 gas?
Teenagers on ebikes.
20 MPH. No helmets.
New way to die young.
Rented blue ebikes
Scattered around town,
The future is here.
My students aghast
that I ride to school most days.
The American Dream.
Quail hen lump.
Curbside babies squealing.
The guilty roads.
Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has had many poems in US and international journals. His first chapbook ‘The Residents’ is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Other poems are forthcoming in The Oregon English Journal and The Amsterdam Quarterly (NL). Matthew is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. http://matthewfriday.weebly.com
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