What does a turtle know of death
who buries herself in mud
all winter and does not eat
or move or take a breath
but lies with legs and head and tail
outstretched, to welcome cold?
What does she dream, ice-sealed
in six-month long exhale,
her heart slowed nearly still?
What thoughts disturb her
glacial tomb? What pale
needle of light directs her will
to rise and breathe and breed?
What resurrection talent prompts
her surfacing in June, resolute,
on cue, to lay her eggs and feed?
What fear has she of butcher’s knife
who gives herself to dark for
half the year, then swims toward light?
What does a turtle know of life?
Nicely framed. Life expresses itself in strange ways--or are they strange only to us because despite all of our science, we cannot explain its diversity of form and function, and even where we know how a heart beats, we do not know why.
ReplyDeleteIn the spirit of that old journalistic nostrum that says, dog bites man is not news but man bites dog is news, I would also like to know what life knows of the turtle.