Photography © Jennifer Matthews

 

Piano Haiku

I wrote a piano haiku
which no one understands.

You try getting a perfect instant
into seventeen notes
and breaking somebody’s heart
with a bird on the wing
in Middle C.

You’ll know then.

It’s like finding love on a bus in Prague
when you were certain you were alone
on a bicycle heading toward Cleveland.

These things are never simple
but it’s all a mystery

and everything becomes a poem
if you let it.

 

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.

Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of Poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.