On a clear night when the moon is down
A skyward glance can sweep me
Into stillness.

Voices mute
Surrounds dissolve away,
I am captured by the silent
Lavish sky.

Captured
In the weightless calm
Of perfect non-responsibility:

In all that vastness
There is not a single thing
I had anything to do with,

And not a single thing
I can do anything about.

Rapt and heedless
The roiling grown-up drifts,
For a moment guiltless
As a child.

By Byron Matthews

Byron Matthews left Iowa for graduate school in North Carolina, later gave up a tenured faculty position in Maryland to make furniture for ten years in Santa Fe. He now lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, a cellist. She encourages his poetry because it's finally something that does not involve large quantities of tools and equipment.