Notes on “Riding the Dragon”

Most of the poem sequence will be clear from context, but so that the reader can see the literal images more clearly — and their metaphoric and symbolic import — it might be useful to gloss a few terms used.

“Hold the boat!” is a command given to paddlers to bury their oars in unison to stop the forward movement of the boat on a dime; in a sense, we’re all inspired to do that by the bravery of breast cancer survivors who choose to buck conventional wisdom and challenge themselves physically after rounds of chemo and invasive surgery.

Feathering is a way of maintaining a steady straight course with minimal movement on the part of the steersman. S/he rotates the paddle a few degrees left or right without reefing on the oar and that compensates for any unevenness in the paddlers’ strokes.

Engine room and power house are the literal terms — obviously metaphoric — for the different sections of paddlers responsible for the steady steam and extra power the rowers provide.

The dragon boat is a long, narrow canoe-like boat that carries 18 or 20 paddlers in nine or ten rows of two rowers each. The drummer calls the rhythm and sits facing the paddlers from the stern, seated behind the dragon’s head. The steersman stands — I call him the “vulgar boatman” — in back before the tail with a single long steering oar. The first three rows set the rhythm and the drummer takes her cue from them, calling the moves and hitting the drum accordingly. The next three or four rows are the engine room — bigger, stronger oarsman in wider seats. The last group are the terminators (my power house), and they are the first gear, so to speak: slowly paddling the boats into the starting gate, and performing functions as called upon by the drummer or steersman, as required in docking and setting a course.