9 November 2025

By Philip Kuepper

What the rowers brought
was the boat home
through the complicity
of wind and waves,
waves that bit like teeth
at the shell,
their wills cheering them on.
It was a hell of turmoil
without and within,
a hell wherein
there was nowhere to turn.
It was rowing in the eye
of the storm, an eye
that blinded all passage.
All the rowers possessed
were the blades of their oars
to battle the teeth of the waves,
that and the determination
to see through the blinding
eye of the storm.
Often, a wreck during their row,
the rowers arrived home
in one piece, and one peace,
like the piece, and the peace
they had started out in.

(24 October 2025)