That Long Moment


Jed Myers

 

Those days, our history. It’s got me
onto the old business, in battle,
of reloading. It took time.

On one knee, fumbling with powder and
shot, a ramrod, hands full with whatnot,
half-hidden in ferns or bramble….

While some other fool, across the dirt,
might well be taking aim. I thought,
that’s you and me. One reloading,

while the other, across the couch
in the living room, half-listening,
levels the barrel of blame.

And I thought of the one time I came
out in the open, on both knees,
both palms turned up in the air

empty, under what would have been
the trees. You stood and ventured out
from your muddy blind, to see

if I really wasn’t still hiding a knife
in some sheath of bitterness, and I wasn’t,
so for once, you knelt with me,

and for that long moment we kissed.
Because you did desire me.
Which was what the war was about.

And we went back to it, reloading.

 

§

 

Jed Myers lives in Seattle. Two of his poetry collections, The Nameless (Finishing Line Press) and Watching the Perseids (winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), are soon to be released. He’s won Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award and Literal Latte’s Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Sanskrit, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere.

 

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