Matkatamiba

Someone’s playing a fiddle up Matkat.
And I dance on my own on a plaza of stone
  As I cling to the hand of a partner unknown,
   Spinning and reeling, free but alone,
    Up on Matkat.

Someone plays a guitar up at Matkat,
And I’m touched to the bone by the beautiful tone
  Of the lyrics that burst from my throat to the stone,
   Thinning the feeling of being alone
    Up on Matkat.

I find myself saying some words to a Lord
Whom I sense by my side in that place.
  And He plucks me and tunes me, and plays me the
      chord
  Whose arpeggio resounds through the whole
        Human Race!

I want to go back up to Matkat,
  And dance there, and sing to the vibrating ring
   Of whatever the instruments are that they bring,
    Beginning the healing. You can’t be alone
     Up on Matkat.

John Kron © 91

THE GRAND CANYON

I speak now of that Grand Canyon
Which lies within each of us.
There are pre-Cambrian rocks at the center, the core,
And from yesterday’s fall;
Marble and granite grown hard from the pressure
     and heat
Of heartbreak and passion;
Crumbling sandstone, layer and layer of sediment.
Sentiment piled on over a lifetime’s experience.

The sun bursts on us each morning
Then dies and we are in darkness,
But moon shadows tease our walls.
We listen to the pulsating rhythm of time’s river
Lapping at our shores.
The sandy places slide, diffuse, move closer to the sea.

A billion years of erosion is magnified,
     demagnified
Into sixty or seventy years as we count time.
Perhaps in a million years your shinbone
Will be a fossil in another Grand Canyon
Cold in a bed of rock next to mine.

Amil Quayle
dedicated to the memory of Georgie,
as we knew her way back when