Tag: Matthew James Friday

By Matthew James Friday

THE TROUT

I see you sliding 
over the muddy gold
bed of the shallow river
as it slips into Lake Lugano.

You follow a flittering 
shoal of hope, gliding 
the thin layers between
the different forms of air.

I’m surprised by your size 
as you snuggle into the sheets
of river and light. Lord 
of the muddier moments,

king-sized in a peasant course,
you draw me down the line
of the green-grey water
until merging with the unseen.


A FEW SPRINKLED WORDS

"How far is between the stars, how much farther 
is what’s right here..."
 -- Rilke 

Late August evening,
light pollution a pastel scum
fronging the pre-Alps around Lugano.

I watch stars spell themselves.
The Big Dipper points its paw to Polaris.
Under Cassiopeia, the tail end

of the Perseid meteor show,
the dusty trail of the Swift-Tuttle comet
on its 34-year love loop of the sun.

I see only the last sparks,
as small as grains of sand, spluttering 
kisses of the final flares.

I’m not putting words in a god’s
gaping mouth; no sprung
mechanisms in mysterious workings.

I only have, as Einstein said, a
vague idea about that highest truth,
the radiant beauty of the unsearchable

and a sudden awareness 
at how fantastically minuscule
my part is. 
A few sprinkled words.


HURRY ON


Drifting at the promenade of Desenzano Del Garda,
admiring freshly fallen snow on the mountains
that crown the pointed head of the Alpine lake.
A building north wind promises in waves.
Here is October tightening its chilling dress. 

We look down at the orange rock under our feet. 
Spun in the dark matter web of irregular lines 
a curling ammonite galaxy with ghostly white 
shell, a reminder of time flattened in plain sight.
The shell spins and I hear the clocks ticking 

trillions of divisions, turning rocks into sand,
caterpillars into butterflies, the hydrogen 
atoms into atomic bombs, my young parents 
into elderly people remembering their own
parents this age, and me a once immortal boy 

now a middle-aged facsimile, puzzled at how 
quickly the sand runs. Now back on the promenade, 
marvelling at the fossil, pointing it out to friends
who want to hurry on - aperitivo calling, snow 
falling, wine to be drunk, the absolute-zero of it all.

Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has been published in numerous international journals, including, recently: Dawntreader (UK), The Dillydoun Review (USA), Verbal Art (India), and Lunch Ticket  (USA). The micro-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, The Residents, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA). 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

By Mathew James Friday

The Cherry Tree

We pick cherries from a tree in Unterback*.
A silent local watches us, arms on hips,
but there’s no fence, just wild grass.

We pluck the cherries in bloody handfuls,
warning each other about staining juice,
giddy with the Biblical bounty. So many

clusters of fruit when you look up at the sky,
red-shifting to purple stars. We only take
a tiny portion of what the tree tempts.

The rest if left to hang too high, rot,
or be gathered by the lucky locals,
if they can take their hands off their hips.

*Unterback is in Switzerland 


The Cuckoo Stopped Singing

Early July and I am stunned 
by the emptiness of the air. 

I suddenly miss his bell ringing, 
reminder that nature persists 

despite our best efforts. He started 
in early May, that unmistakable 

nursery rhyme song postering
in the tree-dressed stage of our 

Montagnola apartment block.
He sang me back to boyhood,

to Epsom Common woods,
where cuckoos were a distant 

promise of fleeting residency, 
the temporary in the seasons,

calling a partner in crime to lay
an egg patterned with our nature,

displacing the righteous, leaving
open mouths, always hungry.

Rightly secretive these tricksters,
afraid to be uncloaked, the confidence 

scam revealed.  I caught a glimpse
in late May as he bolted past, fleeing

to other haunts where I hear him: 
the High Alps, the lips of Italian lakes,

the confusions of teenage heat.
He seems loudest in lazy mid-

summer evenings of exposed moons,
nostalgic pangs even before leaving. 

Later in summer, I am saddened by
the need to wait until another April.


Dreams of Lake Como

I dream of your ripples on the lakeshore, 
ripples of golden waves over golden rocks. 
Like an Arthurian knight, I am drawn 
to your waters and hear the Lady chanting
in Italian, grail promises of healing, cleansing 
siren drawing me into your turquoise depths. 
Fish flit at your hem, some big and unhurried.

In some dreams the lake hazes with mist.
Your mountains become rumours, your far 
shore a blur and your ballad takes me back 
to childhood: playing in moorland rivers 
and coastal rock pools. Time is upturned 
in your glacial heart. The waves giggle over
rocks and sadness in the polished stones.

In other dreams you dress in your jewels:
orange and cream roofed villages piercing
tiny ears of land, the isthmus hand of Bellagio 
dressed in lace strips, steep pearl-topped 
mountain crows. This is something beyond art,
rounder than tabled intentions, deeper 
than stone worship. What do you think of me?

Lucky atoms as near to nothing as can be,
an organic moment of punctuation in time’s 
long sentences. Your eroded indifference is all 
the more beautiful. My prayers are answered 
in reflection. Long after I am gone, you will still 
be Lake Como, but for these dreamy moments, 
we drink wine from the same earthen Grail

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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.