By Jed Myers

To have breathed all these days and crossed
another winter’s start—

to have ridden
this rolling pebble through the light’s narrows
again!

To weather the long dark

falling on toward the chance of skunk cabbage
clean out of the mud—

I spotted
a hummingbird poking the shrubs for buds
in the lean sun,

days past the solstice,

and thought, let the frackers erode
what they must,

let Betelgeuse explode
if it wants,

and those nests of mutant
cells in any of our organs’ lobes

see what they can conquer.

I’m not alone
on this heart’s stretch of beats down
the loops we call years.

So much nectar—
to have flown in love out of myself even once!

Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and four chapbooks, including Dark’s Channels (Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Award) and Love’s Test (winner, Grayson Books Chapbook Contest). Among recent recognitions, his poems have won The Briar Cliff Review’s Annual Poetry Contest, the Prime Number Magazine Award, The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Prize, and The Tishman Review’s Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize. Recent work appears in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, Ruminate, and elsewhere. He edits poetry for Bracken.