I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

The hour is announced short,

Westminster Chimes missing
a middling B, ringing

in our heads, remembered,
duller, less loud,
than the struck G,F, and E

No one is fashionable today.
The count comes in too soon,
off-beat; vanities burn
out of time, in the difference,

smoke

the color of lungs
drying, sucking
raw air between buildings,

history breach born

before the first chime
of the series on a fixed scale
of what must be noon.

Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be found in Ponder Review, The Thieving Magpie, and Common House. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Bow in 2024. Cicada, Dog & Song, a second full-length collection, will be published by Serving House Books in 2026. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.