23 April 2025

“April is the cruellest month” T.S. Eliot wrote, and that might be so. However, April is also National Poetry Month in the U.S., and what better way to celebrate that by publishing some “extra” poems by HTBS’s own Philip Kuepper during the rest of this month.

By Philip Kuepper

The belief in life,
after death,
dovetails in ancient
Egypt, and Christianity,
dovetails, intellectually crafted,
by thinking minds,
dovetailing that holds together
the end pieces of a philosophy.

I like the boats of cedar and reeds
that were built to ferry
pharaohs to the far
world, through darkness
into light. I imagine
attendants to Maat
as the oarsmen, oarsmen
rowing without pause,
until the current of eternity
took hold the hull,
took hold the oars,
and rowed the oarsmen
on into the realm from which
no one need know return,
as, even gone, one is still present.
For eternity is not time sensitive.
One is never late having died out of time.
For there is nothing to be on time for.
The boat of the soul sails
forever forward. Forever forward,
rows the soul.

(4 April 2025)