Living in the Low Country
by Skinner Matthews
The trawler churns out of Port Royal
its wide wings and lazy lines cast
feed a village of lifetimes the benthos
off the bottom. Each day, the sun rises
on the island we call Helena’s, her shore
at times, only loomings on the sea. Egrets
peck at the thrift of what appears fleshless meat
the colors of the world in the mucilage.
Those ordinary wonders of green.
Chartreuse so teal the field
they live in is more alive than I am
reminding me of my brother Steve’s taste
for plump radishes, the mysteries of love
he would never have, unaware
who loved him and why. Left nowhere
tilting at windmills, schizophrenic
voices and visions
mute the delirium with sadness. Not knowing
the kiss of girl or boy, what love is
in the stomach, the heart and the groin
Buddhist monks circumambulate
heads bowed in the procession
of another angel perishing, saying goodbye
to Philadelphia. I do regret being witness.
Outside, meagerness
is in the silence, shame and humility left in living
beauty somewhere in the divisions of the brain.
In the menagerie of this incidental, wounded world
there are no unusable souls.
Skinner Matthews lives and writes on Hilton Head Island. He hopes his poetry celebrates his and his family’s working-class upbringing and sheds light on the dark places that exist like landmines in the streets, neighborhoods, and family households of the working-class and poverty-stricken.
He has been published in Amethyst Review, As Surely as the Sun Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, Ekstasis Magazine, Livina Press, Loud Coffee Press, Rising Phoenix Review, and Susurrus.
