6 June 2021

By Philip Kuepper

They unlocked their oars,
and opened the doors of their minds
to the otherworldly morning.
They had no particular course to row.
Their minds were set on detours.
They would row where the water led them,
even into the fingers of inlets
they knew like the backs of their hands.

There they had seen up close
the tapestry of nature
as it was being woven: A school
of darters scattering at the sight
of the shadows of their oars;
a blue, dropped among the reeds
by a distracted osprey;
a sparrow snapping up a moth mid-flight.

They, too, were part of the living tapestry,
threads being worked, impermanently.
They were only rowing through,
a wave in the weave,
that would afterwards leave no trace,
save the aura of their presence having inhabited
never to be repeated space.

(14 May 2021)