9 April 2023

By Philip Kuepper

Rowers know rowing
before they know oars,
before they know water.
Rowing knows rowers
in the waters of the womb.
Rowing is fluid.
Rowing does not know division:
rower-shell-oars-water.
They are one.
As the earth revolves
spinning on its axis
round the sun, uninterrupted,
so rowing and rower
round one another,
each innate in the other.
All is liquid.
All flows.
Where everything else is fragmented,
combining and recombining,
rowing is the slip stream
where one simply glides.

(19 February 2023)

Editor’s Note: As April is Poetry Month, we will be posting more that usual of Philip Kuepper’s poems.