At the Alabama Folk School for Writers and Musicians

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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about

Music:
Ned Mudd
Code
from the album Time Travel for Dummies

lyrics

At the Alabama Folk School for Writers & Musicians

It is 5 in the morning, and a woman sings
from a distant room. Her voice, sweet and high and lonesome.
Walls mute her words, but the melody carries,
rising and falling with the breath of those still sleeping.

A guitar punches through the earthy darkness like daffodils
in spring, and when her song softens to silence, I am left
in a dreamy half-awake state, thinking about poems
and the color of music when an insistent tapping
draws me to the window.

A man, his hair a sleepy mess,
raps his wooden baton against the rough balcony rail.
Treefrogs and katydids fall silent.

He is undeniably Ludwig van Beethoven.
A chorus of drowsy birds jostle for place in the branches before him.
They puff feathers, stamp tiny feet, and fix shining black eyes
upon his gloved hand. With a flourish, his baton blurs
like the first flash of sun upon a beating wing,
and their birdsong breaks, like this day,
into another Ode to Joy.

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022
Music:
Ned Mudd
Code
from the album Time Travel for Dummies

license

about

Matt Layne Birmingham, Alabama

Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet's nests and looking under rocks since he was knee-high to a peanut peg.
I reckon you oughta check him out.