19 April 2025

By Philip Kuepper

Rowers are drummers.
They drum rivers with their oars.
They are tribesmen calling the spirits
of the ancestral rowers unto them.
They drum like rain drumming
on these months of spring.
They are drummers, electric with speed,
on the Charles, on the Thames.
They are Cambridge manifestations of brawn.
They are new London manifestations,
cementing, with water, traditions,
old world, and new.
To the beat of the rhythm
of their oars they row.
They become the drumming
they are the drummers of.
They row unbroken.
They row rhythmic.
That they row is what matters.
All else flows away.

(13 April 2025)