“The Shadow of the Valley”
“The Shadow of the Valley” and Other Poems by alumni Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) appear online at The American Reader.
The Shadow of the Valley
The shadow of the valley
is a placeholder for the valley,
a reminder that a body stands
between those stands of bleachers,
or this stand of trees or the neighborhood
watchers standing around watching
birds fly back and forth from their nests
to the gardens in every Westwood
neighborhood, all the while casting shadows
that somehow don’t look like birds
but like people wondering
what’s going on, like Marvin Gaye
in his song “What’s Going On”
from his album of the same name.
On the cover he’s wearing
a red wool hat, an image my friend
used in something he wrote and then
later read in front of an audience
in Iowa to get them to participate...[Keep Reading]…
Matt is the author of the poetry collection Who’s Who Vivid
