April Poetry Month
This week’s featured poem comes from Kansas writer Ryan Kegley.
Kegley draws much of his inspiration from the natural beauty surrounding the Prairiewood Preserve, where he spends time exploring and observing the prairie landscape.
His forthcoming collection, In the Bewilderment, to be published later this year by NatureCulture, brings together a series of prairie poems, many written during those walks.
Kegley describes this poem, “Each in Its Turn,” as being about “presence and noticing and seeing and honoring that seeing.”
“Each in Its Turn” from In the Bewilderment by Ryan Kegley. Copyright © 2026 by Ryan Kegley. Used by permission of NatureCulture. Forthcoming (nature-culture.org).
Each in Its Turn
by Ryan Kegley
Today was for noticing small things—
the bumble bee flitting amongst buffalo bur
working her pollinator magic,
the explosion of rigid goldenrod not yet bloomed,
the sun dappling through
riparian canopy as I crossed a dry wash,
the widow skimmer perched
on my walking stick who, unafraid, allowed
me to touch the tip of a gossamer wing,
the cicada lumbering past,
his shrill call an unwelcome intrusion,
the common wood nymph’s yellow-ringed eyespots
a brazen contrast to his lush sumac perch,
two silver-spotted skippers sharing
a catclaw brier, their haustella uncurled
to reach the nectar stored deep within,
and, nearest the creek, the mayfly resting
on my forearm, her translucence
proof that she had only a few days left to live.
I once wrote that I am overwhelmed by
the abundance of summer, and that may still be true,
but today I learned to embrace
such riches by savoring each in its turn—
one by one by remarkable one.