I’ve just come from walking to and fro
in the earth, Satan tells God
before they make the wager
standing for centuries
as metaphor of man’s existence—
trapped on the wheel like an insect
under a microscope:
his disastrous ecology,
his ravaged immune system,
even his broken-veined, wine-flushed face
looking back from the rearview
and parked alone by the river.
He should have been born
with fins, he thinks
as the swans arch and preen
and attack one another
though everyone says they mate for life
and the afternoon wind
raises welts of sunlight
over the torqued and rippling surface
and the beautiful ravenous fish.
Copyright © 2025 by Joseph Millar. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 18, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
