Lifting the Keels

          —beginning with a line by Adam Zagajewski*


We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves
Some rose on the last great swell
Trouble churned us and we surged
shouldered others over the walls
We were the waves flooding the world
Our blood’s waters filled the squares
a turbulent brilliance across borders
Once more we’re about to rise 
and our compassion’s roar crest
the barricades’ lords embarrassed
We’ll exceed the tideline of our dividedness
lift the keels ours and our children’s 
lives off the hardened mud masts righting 
like compass needles



*from the poem “Don’t Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve”
       
                                             

Jed Myers is author of three books of poetry, his latest Learning to Hold (Wandering Aengus Press, Editors’ Award, 2024). Recent honors include the Northwest Review Poetry Prize, the River Heron Poetry Prize, and the Sundress Chapbook Editor’s Choice. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The Poetry Review, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, Southern Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle and edits the journal Bracken.