World View

from Miracle Strip by Matt Layne

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lyrics

World View

I’m going to write a poem today to remind me why
I love this world. I’m going to fill it with birds that wing and kids

who sing so purely from within their soul-selves that tears blossom.
I’m going to paint literary pictures of camping trips

and waterfalls I visited as a child and season it with the warming
reassurance of my father’s hand holding mine as the water roared

like nothing else I’d ever heard before or ever since.
I will celebrate the joys and fears I found in fathering

my own laughing son: the way his hand feels in mine as we watch
the ocean sing to the moon at night. I will fill the wooden

heart of the page so it overflows with quiet kindnesses
that subtly rewrite the history of the world. Future

tyrants will topple in their teenage years. Their rage allayed
by the grace of a friend who listened with love and compassion

to the injustice they suffered. In the cracks between each line
I’ll sow some downy moss-green early-morning light to sprout up

in the lay of night as birds begin their daily hymn of joy,
and I will write about the feathery way you drift from sleep

and wake to gaze out at the world, as the world wakes
and coolly gazes back in upon the flowering forever of us all.

credits

from Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022

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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.