By Matthew Friday
A White Feather
A white feather fell slowly
down,
as light as a tear.
It brushed up against the window
and for a second was held there
by an invisible thermal, a tiny
hand that rocked it back and forth,
speaking of miracles:
invisible air resisting,
the illusion of gravity that shocks
every child, then questions
about the bird it fell from,
carbon atoms boiled up and spewed
out in an ancient supernova
long before there were birds
or human observers, the trick
of flight we have all envied,
asking what happens
to all the feathers in the world?
Then it continued to fall
down
softly, so very softly,
like we all fall - at different rates
but we all fall.
I Feel, Jazz
Second lockdown looming.
A cocktail of anxiety and wine
swirling in my soul. No one knows.
The future is just scat.
I turn to jazz again.
Miles,
you’re there for me
mimicking the universe
with the chaos that can
coalesce into occasional
meaning and melody
Then leap
apart again.
When I listen to you,
I am altered, reassured, at peace.
I dance around the empty apartment,
spilling myself in arms and heart,
accepting what chaos creates.
The Candle
Start with the flame,
that beautiful spark
of entropy proving itself,
compounds combusting,
changing solid wax to molten
rivers that mourn, cool and harden,
heaping new
forms on old,
re-creating but
reducing,
all the while less and less,
structured energy to heat loss.
As your candle burns up,
taking years, if you are lucky
enough to deny the 2nd Law,
the lengthening yellow hand waves shadows
on a white wall, while shadows that grow confident
as the night darkens, softly dim.
All that fading, dissembling
can be cheated
a while,
the brief
breathe
of
a
poem.
Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Acta Victoriana (Canada), and Into the Void (Canada). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).
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