I am a turtle.
26 Jun 2010 2 Comments
As my friend’s father said tonight to me, “you are a turtle; you carry your home on your back.” My friend said the same a few days ago. And so, since it is late, and my friend is here, and her son is here and sick with a fever…..I will post a poem I wrote some weeks ago, while at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
I have been in jail
I say, I have been in jail,
and the slow sweet paddle
of the turtle releases me.
Its hind legs reach through the water.
Coy, in bright orange pass it by,
And the turtle paddles,
pushing its head abvoe
above, always above,
clasping its shelter to itself.
Sweet, round, soft
flesh of its head
breaking surface.
Sun kissing the wet inch as it
crosses the great depths.
The pull and push of the turtle,
the slow effort shows me my yearning,
shows me:
I could be dying;
I am dying;
and, the wonder of this moment
takes me out of my slow decay.
Turtles in a still topple lay
one on two and two on three.
They create a sculpture made of rock
until one remembers its legs
are splayed out indecorously
and shyly pulls them in again,
modest and slow.
A small turtle, to scratch an itch,
shifts and suddenly a plop pulls my attention
to the upredictability
even when faced with a stone
plopped in the water by
the hands of giant children,
careless and yet beautiful in the result.
Because the turtles come
and make it beautiful,
people who live busy lives
of busy days with clocks and watches
and things to do and television shows…
the wonder captures them too.
One man saw the small turtle fall
and laughed in delight.
He wanted to plop in too,
I could tell.
A Spanish speaking family
walks past and the mother exclaims
to excite her child’s interest, “tecitas, tecitas!”
That must be turtle in Spanish, and it makes
them sound as happy as I feel to see them.
Someone notices death -
the wonder is that no one noticed sooner.
The bright orange glass of one dead fish
curled on its side, breaking surface, catches
the sunlight and shines.
But no one noticed death’s glimmer,
so enraptured in the stone that
holds the turtles, the turtles with
their stone-colored limbs and
moss-covered stone-colored shells,
and the sunken eyes that open
one at a time, and close a slow syncopation.
A new life.
25 Jun 2010 4 Comments
No matter how much you want it, when you choose to change your life, expect it to be more difficult than you imagine, and expect it to cost a lot more than you want it to. That sounds like advice. I guess it is, but it’s really a revelation. Revelations are funny things, because when you tell someone else a revelation they have an “oh, of course,” moment; but when you are in the midst of the revelation, it’s just hard. At least, it has been for me. So far, I’ve spent at least twice as much money as I wanted….and everything has been hard. Things have just been hard. They’ve been hard because everything I’m doing is new. I don’t know how to get to the CVS from where I am; all of my belongings are in bags or boxes and I haven’t had a cup of my favorite tea in about a week, maybe more. These are small things, I know, but when everything you do in a day, from taking a shower, to scanning a document, to making a cup of tea, is new, and you have to ask someone else, it’s hard. But, so far, a month into my adventure, with everything being hard, and all of the complaints I have running through my mind at any moment, I wouldn’t go back. Not yet. We’ll see what I say about that in a few weeks, or months. In the meantime, this is a beginning. An inelegant beginning to be sure, but a beginning nontheless. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what this is all about. In the meantime, sleep well, and try something hard.
