illustration by Cathy John
SUNDAY, APRIL 22
Cirrus
I’d like to leave
an imprint
on the world
lighter than
I’d formerly meant.
Just a scent,
not the thud
of the thing
steaming on a plate.
Instead of “I told you so!”
let my epitaph be
the glance, the edge,
the mist. The delicately
attenuated swirl
of an innuendo
instead of the thunderhead.
The rain that fell
when I was ambitious
seemed conspiringly rushed
in my way. But the same rain
today tastes of here and now
because of where it’s been.
I’d like to be gentle
with small, great things.
They are larger
than what we think
we came here for.
I’d like to be an eye of light
that opens the air
and burns beyond ambition,
like the sun that can’t see us
and is beyond our human reach,
yet is in us trillions of times over.
From The Memory of Water by Jack Myers
Reprinted by arrangement of New Issues Poetry & Prose, Kalamazoo, MI
Copyright 2011 by Jack Myers
JACK MYERS (1941-2009)
Creative writing professor Jack Myers mentored countless aspiring writers, including the editor of this magazine, during his thirty-four years of teaching at SMU and Vermont College. In 1994, Myers co-founded The Writer’s Garret, a nonprofit literary center in Dallas, with his wife Thea Temple. The author of 18 books, he was named Poet Laureate of Texas in 2003. Myers final book The Memory of Water is a nominee for 2012 Pulitzer and Pushcart Prizes.
Edible Dallas & Fort Worth is a quarterly local foods magazine that promotes the abundance of local foods in Dallas, Fort Worth and 34 North Texas counties. We celebrate the family farmers, wine makers, food artisans, chefs and other food-related businesses for their dedication to using the highest quality, fresh, seasonal foods and ingredients.
