19 April 2026

By Philip Kuepper

Presently,
I stood watching
the ageless ocean breaking,
the ocean so ancient
even time failed to calculate its age.
At what exact moment
the ocean came into being
not even eternity could be certain,
The ocean was as old as age itself.
This morning men rowed
its waves in sport.
They put their muscles to oars,
oars to waves,
and rowed,
men, young, ripped, fit,
men of the moment,
men rowing where men
had been rowing since ancient times,
no, not the same waves
in the same place,
but the same ocean,
the ocean that had laid there
long before the men rowing it
had even been the atoms
that would come to form them.
I, presently, witnessing them,
and then converting them
into these words of this text,
row them from the ocean they are rowing,
the ever liquid, everchanging ocean,
to the set ocean of text,
that the reader rows
as they read these words.

(10 April 2026)