Rowers Gliding Past Georgetown University on the Potomac in the Dim Light of Dawn

Noel Joshua Hadley

12/9/25

AFTER scribbling this poem’s title in a notebook

I reclined in a swivel chair and chewed on my pencil

feeling rather satisfied with myself.  

 

I considered leaving the remaining page a blank canvas

without the nasally congestion of a word-salad.

The mental image is enough, I half-heartedly convinced myself,

but I could not turn away from the dimming silhouette of spired rooftops.  

 

Warming numb fingers with the moist air from my lungs,

I tuck hands into coat pockets while soldiers in sweaty gray shirts and yellow sashes

jog from one end of the stone bridge to the other.

They might as well be pastors or priests.

Nobody so much as looks my way.

 

All that remains are naked branches and a ghostly fog

lifting with the dimming purple glow of autumn.

 

Down below in the Potomac,

clay figures emerge with the honeydew of dawn.

 

Rowing. Rowing. Rowing.

 

Seated in the stern of the boat is the best-selling author in the world.  

Moses, with his megaphone and a pair of horns protruding from his marble head rather than the usual lightning bolts,

instructs the authors of the Scripture to row.

 

Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

James, Jude, Paul, and the writer of third John

are usually numbered among them, but not today.  

 

No—it is the faces of Thomas, Philip, and Aristobulus that I see.

Barnabas, Bartholomew, Joseph of Arimathea and Clement

come rowing by, brows dripping,

muscles aching.

 

And look! There is yet another boat

sliding across the mirror of subconsciousness.

 

Nobody pays the coxswain any mind but I see her,

I know who she is.

 

Ruach CHAKA’MAHA holds the megaphone,

instructing the Daughter of Tsiyon and her ladies in waiting to row.  

Saint Pamela of the House of Glasgow is seated among them,

as is my editor, Rebecca, who somehow manages to pour the maple syrup on all of my word waffles.

 

So there I was laughing fiendishly at the title and blank page before me,

but mostly the thought of Rebecca in the boat.

 

I poured myself another cup of coffee

while the fog lifted and the soldiers went jogging by,

and then watched clay figures on the Potomac

rowing silently through the canvas of time.