New Poetry by Matthew Curlewis

Alter the Frequency

Dawn is still in the distance.

A future event never certain –

always hoped for.

Out here beneath a heaven-sized sky,

far away from city glare,

it’s tempting not to somehow…

let go of everything.

Then I could float upwards

and lose myself between and

around and within and among

those billions of twinkling lights.

If I stand up straight,

weight balanced evenly between

both feet, cast my arms out wide and

raise my face upwards to

gaze at all the stars,

it feels like maybe, just

maybe if I did this under

certain different conditions,

then I would actually vaporize.

Not into darkness and nothingness,

but into light.

Boundlessly bright, infinite light –

neither ending nor beginning,

but much more importantly:

continuing.

Ideally however, that will all occur at a later moment,

much later. (During a future event always certain –

rarely hoped for.)

So I return my arms to my sides,

and smile in gratitude that this isn’t

my time for any of that;

not yet.

What I need to do right now instead is simply:

be here.

Bear witness to the beauty and the majesty

and this moon and star-lit darkness, and

let it all fill me, without bursting me.

So I watch, and

breathe and wait, and

feel and sense, and then,

there – there it is.

The most subtle of changes in the breeze.

A barely perceptible alteration of frequency because:

the sun has commenced her ascent. 

And the more I tune in, and delight in

the sensations of stars and planets and galaxies,

wheeling and arcing over me, and

through me and around me,

my heart goes out to every being every where

that has never had the time or the luck or the opportunity to

stand here and just feel the energy of everything.

So if that sounds anything like you, then I invite you, come –

come out to what at first might look like a void,

until you stare at it a bit longer and find that you,

you yourself have the power to alter the frequency.

Which is when you’ll also discover there is no void; this space is full –

full not beyond your wildest imagination, but full

because it is the source of ALL imagination.

- © Matthew Curlewis 2023

Since growing up in Australia, Matthew Curlewis has worked as a performer-designer-writer on four continents. At his entity Amsterdam Writers, Matthew runs the workshops Writers’ Stretch & Tone, and Storytelling for Academics. His works can be found in publications including The Guardian, Time Out, Blume Illustrated, and Wordpeace, and his Dutch-British-Polish coproduction short film Brilliance can be viewed via the streaming platform Lesflicks.