“Idyll,” a poem by Jed Myers.
Militant nature.
“The jay looks out for others’ hungers — glints in the groundcover, flits in the canopy …”
Idyll
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A Steller’s jay turrets its head
this way, that, militant
blue monk in its black cowl,
-
claws in the V of two branches.
Beady-eyed scrounger scans
the hedged surround, sure
-
the peanut it’s got wedged
in that cranny’s of interest
to others now. One
-
bony phalanx over the shell,
by a few jabs the beak
stabs into the meat.
-
As it feasts, the jay looks out
for others’ hungers — glints
in the groundcover, flits
-
in the canopy — beast canny,
anxious as any, and I wonder,
where in all survival is peace.
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Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and three chapbooks, including Dark’s Channels (Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Award). Recent honors include the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry, The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, and The Tishman Review’s Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. Recent poems can be found in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Solstice, and elsewhere. Jed is Poetry Editor for the journal Bracken.
