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To the Reader

Mark Svenvold | Poetry

When I rose from all of this, briefly, that morning,
as if from the grave, to walk a path
through dune grass to the beach,
and let my eyes rest upon the gratifying
geometries of the horizon, and nobody’s
soul was fluttering around anxiously,
and no one waiting upon the place reserved
for god’s signature, and a sea bass leapt,
arching, from the waves, and the waves,
yoked to no old longing,
had only themselves to tumble over,
and all that could be said of doubt and rage
had withdrawn, for a spell, pulled by the small force
of a pale moon in the western sky,
then for a moment our telemetry was just wind
riffing upon physics without implication,
but with you there, reader—looking down upon it all
from the point of view
of the only god there will ever be.