Three Turtle Songs
Turtle by the Door
The bears and wolves are few,
one threadbare widow mourning,
two grays as consumptive as smoke.
The large dwindle,
their bodies grow more awkward,
more at odds.
The heavier beast's sway
like drunks in the scant woods.
Under a pelting dark they come.
Beneath a stabbing ice, one by one-
the animals.
I listen to their shuffling,
the scrape of delving claws.
They are scavenging,
pulled closer to me by visceral prods.
Hesitant paws withdraw as they near,
a restlessness keeps them gnawing
a middle ground.
I crane my neck from its ribcage,
they fall back and return,
wanting - always wanting.
The small creatures enter
where cracks fill with moonlight.
They scuttle and hesitate,
a little way,
a little.
I am Turtle,
a makeshift thing,
cloud-splashed and sullied.
I sing back the needy shadows,
cast my lamplight eyes
onto their weltered
hair-streaked hides.
~~~
Turtle Speaks
I did not bundle this day’s flesh,
nor did I carry it to a pathless end.
I merely watched it pass over black mountains,
slip away over thinning trails.
The sky-tent will catch fire again.
I am a roughhewn turtle.
I am starlight in a mud-pool.
A blind faced mole has carried
the moon up from the dirt once more,
though it is only a white bone,
only a hollow tooth.
Turtle am I, an unwrought creator,
one who watches,
who knows not to say
what cannot be said.
~~
Turtle Goes to the Light
Turtle's carcass is nibbled
into threads of brown river water.
His empty shell tumbles lazily
in slow currents.
Turtle stays where the starry mammoths
beat sunlight into skin and bone,
and he waits.
Mole, beaver, and badger
heap the dead upward
until light licks them away.
The world feeds upon itself,
Time weaves new moth wings
from long buried evenings.
Then turtle reappears.
He hatches from an egg pushed through
green sludge and marsh fire.
He returns as a burnt shadow.
Turtle's leathery tongue clacks
he calls to all the blood-filled:
“Come again,
come around and around” he calls.
When his song is done
he perches on a scorched log
in the middle of everywhere
as silent as a stone.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2024
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