At the Alabama Folk School for Writers and Musicians
It is 5 in the morning, and a woman sings from a distant room...
At the Alabama Folk School for Writers and 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.
Matt Layne writes…
Unmitigated joy. How badly do you crave that these days? God knows, I do. A moment where that well-spring opens up inside like the mythical Hippocrene and burbles forth (but that’s another poem altogether).
This poem sprang from one such moment. Lying in an uncomfortable bed, and realizing how blessedly beautiful the world around me can be. Let’s go back there ... Please!
“At the Alabama Folk School for Writers and Musicians” appears in Miracle Strip, released August 31, 2022. The music is “Code” from Ned Mudd’s album, Time Travel for Dummies.
Miracle Strip, a poetry collection by Matt Layne, is a unique hybrid of the written and spoken word. Each piece of the collection has an end-stop embellishment QR code which, when scanned, transforms the reader into a listener. Layne has recorded each poem, often with the accompaniment of musician and poet, Ned Mudd. The first line of the book invites the reader to “tell me your story, and I will tell you mine,” in the campfire tradition. In Miracle Strip, the reader and poet embark on an experiential journey of memories and the ghosts who haunt us.
Miracle Strip by Matt Layne is in print! Get your copy today!
Poet, librarian, raconteur; Matt Layne has been poking hornet’s nests and looking under rocks for lizards and snakes since he was knee-high to a peanut peg. His debut multimedia poetry collection, Miracle Strip, had been awarded the 2025 Alabama Author Award for Poetry and was named the 2024 Book of the Year by the Alabama State Poetry Society. Order your copy today.
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I agree, let's go to a better, more peaceful and inspiring place ... but not in the past. I see a bright future in a few years. DAMMIT, I SEE a better future. I just hope it's not so far in the future that I won't be able to live in it.