*To Virginia Woolf. Her boulders and chains, her sojourn into the river Ouse.
What have we to measure
the distance we are
from ocean or albatross?
The pieces of offshore reef
breaking on barrier islands
a dead white alabaster
adrift of their environment.
Chrysalides of thoughts
and beliefs and each
dies easily. The truth never
lasting as long as it should
so we follow what? Maps
their lines, their geographies
the sciences, the furrowed fields
we farm, the chasms and crevices
of each mountain, canyon
and valley. Is nature so simple
and complicated in its sophistication?
The hummingbird, the bee, flower
the pupa, so small yet carrying
the weight of the world. So simple
so pure yet how do we avoid
the bottom of the river Ouse?*
find inner sanctum where we belong?
if we are not free of all but the ties
that bind us—to the sorrow, the joy
the thrum of opening and closing
and opening and closing
and opening.
Skinner Matthews is a poet living and writing in Bluffton SC. He writes for spiritual enlightenment of, and with an informed knowledge of the working class. He hopes his poetry brings light to the many dark places that exist like landmines in the streets, neighborhoods, and family households of the working class. His work is published or forthcoming in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Livina Press, Ekstasis, As Surely as the Sun, Rising Phoenix Review, Stray Branch Literary Journal, and Sea Change Anthology [8th Edition]
Amethyst Review 