Another Good Read

by R L Swihart

Once you give into the ride it continues, with exacting language
and convincing thoughts, for paragraphs or pages, before
you pause in disbelief

*

Once the snowball is dropped in the desert, maybe not even on a hill,
with scant verbiage, it still keeps rolling

At some point it rolls right into a song

At another point it gets so big it takes on “goodness” and “power
over evil” and almost everything not-yet

*

I finish the book

I believe and don’t know what to believe

The simple declarative is best but even that is of course
fraught with snares

*

It’s back on the shelf and time passes. A pantheon isn’t a pantheon
except in feeling. I pick it up and begin again


R L SWIHART came of age in Michigan but has lived in California for the last 30 plus years. He is the author of Matman & Testudo (2018), Woodhenge (2020) and The Last Man (second edition, 2021), all independently published by Gold Across The Water Books. His poems have appeared in The Denver Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, Salt Hill, Rhino and Quadrant, among other publications.