Val Matthews Shares Her Thoughts on Poetry

Charlottesville essayist Val Matthews tells us why she believes in the necessity of poetry.

PRESIDENTIAL RE-ELECTION   (by Val Matthews, from her "Little Book" titled "This and That")

In my distress, I turned the Messiah up full blast

So that it echoed over the silent farm fields.

“This is very loud,” said my son.

Standing outside in the dark I looked up at the sky.

There was an object like a star but it was moving –

Zig-zagging across the darkness -

I called my son, he could not hear above the music's roar

I dragged him out and we looked up and there it was again,

Zig-zagging from a different point,

Quite frantic in its flight. A UFO my son said. But why

The frantic flight? Perhaps it heard what we heard and

Felt the way we felt.