Jed Myers

I begin to pray for the world. Believe me
it’s involuntary—a lamp chain’s pulled,
my bulb filament glows….

Down through a forested gouge in the earth, we took the trail under tall firs and cedars toward our secret lookout. We wanted to take in the distances over our inland sea. Off that water an icy wind infiltrated our slice of woods—old conifers shifted, moaned like live sirens. Ferns thrived on those moss-curtained towers—countless

My daughter writes, to all those who follow her on the web, my eyes               are the same as my father’s. She means to reassure herself they are not so strange. But mine are a stranger’s eyes, as were my grandfather’s, open late like the immigrant grocer’s lit with the awnings up after midnight, eyes