We talked out our blues to the dark,
backs to a log, seated on dirt
the summer’d dried out. Before us
the trees like silhouette curtains parted—
the starry backdrop went back
and back, a oneness of distance
and time, what had cast us all out
on our world lines. We had parked
our families in the motel by the road,
glad for a walk out into the dusk,
chance for a smoke, maybe a tavern’s red
sign-glow among the conifer trunks
as we scuffed gravel shoulder around
the long bend. There was no tavern,
but a dirt road to a small lot, someone’s
not-yet cabin, and without discussion
we’d sat down for the show. Night,
what can it know? For all the time
it held in its view, it told us nothing—
not how in years we’d be out of our houses,
out of the blame showers, immersed
in the lulls and surges of uncertain touch,
wanderers like when we were young
but old. Could the night have said
there’s another road, shown the invisible
need in love’s angry bed, turned us
toward not away? I wonder—with all
the star-theater’s space before us, for all
our talk of our thwarted urges—what
if the dark spoke we’d have heard.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 3.
Jed Myers lives in Seattle. His poetry collections include Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), the chapbook The Nameless (Finishing Line Press), and a chapbook forthcoming from Egress Studio Press. His work has received Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award, the Literal Latte Poetry Award, and Blue Lyra Review’s Longish Poem Award.
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