Pick-a-Poem: “Scullers at Dawn”

Welcome, blog readers, to another installment of our weekly Pick-a-Poem feature. Each week, we highlight a new poem here for your enjoyment (we hope). Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover your new favorite poet. These poems all come from Poetry Daily, which is a really cool website that features a new poem every day. This week we’re featuring Scullers at Dawn by Arne Weingart.

According to his bio page, Arne Weingart has had his poetry featured in many publications, including RHINO, Arts & Letters, Mudfish, and The Spoon River Poetry Review, to name a few. He has been granted a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and is an alumnus of Columbia University’s MFA program in writing.

Scullers at Dawn by Arne Weingart

Like all artists
you start out in the dark

pushing off
alone from the silent docks

of the thousand
black rivers and black lakes

with no special
purpose in mind not transport

or carnage
or measurement not even

for pleasure
exactly but for speed in

these narrow
fragile boats you tie in and

you move your slides
forward you set your hands

at the catch
and now all at once you pull

the sun explodes
like blood behind your eyes

and the black world
moves under you toward morning

I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem. For more posts like this one, click here.

— Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan