If you care to, I would enjoy hearing your comments on both/either the form and/or the content. I really like the first two--whether or not the "news" story is factual or mythical . . .
FIRST POEM:
FROM UNDERNEATH by STEPHEN DUNN
A giant sea turtle saved the life of a 52 year-old woman lost at sea
for two days after a shipwreck in the Southern Phillipines. She rode on the turtle's back.
–Syracuse Post-Standard
When her arms were no longer
strong enough to tread water
it came up beneath her, hard
and immense, and she thought
this is how death comes,
something large between your legs
and then the plunge.
She dived off instinctively,
but it got beneath her again
and when she realized what it was
she soiled herself, held on.
God would have sent something winged,
she thought. This came from beneath,
a piece of hell that killed a turtle
on the way and took its shape.
How many hours passed?
She didn't know, but it was night
and the waves were higher.
The thing swam easily in the dark.
She swooned into sleep.
When she woke in the morning,
the sea calm, her strange raft
still moving. She noticed the elaborate
pattern of its shell, map-like,
the leathery neck and head
as if she'd come up behind
an old longshoreman
in a hard-backed chair.
She wanted and was afraid to touch
the head – one finger
just above the eyes –
the way she would touch her cat
and make it hers.
The more it swam a steady course
the more she spoke to it
the jibberish of the lost.
And then the laughter
located at the bottom
of oneself, unstoppable.
The call went from sailor to sailor
on the fishing boat: A woman
riding an "oil drum"
off the starboard side.
But the turtle was already swimming
toward the prow
with its hysterical, foreign cargo
and when it came up alongside
it stopped
until she could be hoisted off.
Then it circled three times
and went down.
The woman was beyond all language,
the captain reported:
the crew was afraid of her
for a long, long time.
SECOND POEM:
ESSAY ON COMPASSION
After Stephen Dunn's "From Underneath"
The cat wound tight against my foot idles himself
to sleep
I tell myself he loves me past food and shelter
past my fingers' rough massage
I think I know this to be true but I say I tell myself
to show how carefully I assume nothing
to prove I am no sentimental fool
When I cut my hand this same cat lapped
the blood that pooled like cooling grease
but when I cried for what I thought was loss
of what again I'd thought was love
he touched my cheek with one dry paw
stared into my eyes until I looked away
The newspaper says a giant sea turtle
carried a shipwrecked woman most of two days
before delivering her up to a fishing boat
How to explain the turtle's choice
that it rose beneath the woman twice
before she let herself ride that cold back
that in two days the turtle did not once dive
How would a biologist dismiss this as
some odd coincidence of instincts
the woman saved without the turtle caring
I say and mostly do not trust that the turtle
saved her life because it wanted to
I say too with all the certainty of one
who never made or saved a life
this must have been compassion
that well fed in calm salt water one turtle
had no stronger thirst that day than to try on
a cast off human goodness to see if it would float
When this deaf and aged slack ribbed cat
gets up to walk his bones across the room
stops and seems to slowly reconsider
then limps back to where he'd started
I think it better for us all that I assume
that when he seems to think he thinks
that when he seems to love he loves
that the turtle knew exactly what it did
and what would happen if it didn't
-Richard Lehnert
THIRD POEM:
SCIENCE FICTION
I can travel
faster than light
so can you
the speed of thought
the only trouble
is at destinations
our thought balloons
are coated invisible
no one there sees us
and we can't get out
to be real or present
phone and videophone
are almost worse
we don't see a journey
but stay in our space
just talking and joking
with those we reach
but can never touch
the nothing that can hurt us
how lovely and terrible
and lonely is this
-- Les Murray
So glad I am able to travel by plane (and train?) to come see you all sometimes, and that you all are able to travel sometimes to Moscow or a mutual meeting place so we all can be real and present! : ) --Love, Mom, MaMa, Gret
Nice poems, mom. Thanks for posting them for us.
ReplyDelete...So, I know you were wondering this while I was in Moscow, so did you ever find out if that sea turtle tale was true or legend or a bit of both?
No, I didn't do any more research than what we as a group quickly did at the poetry evening: we googled it, and did find a few blurbs . . .
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, though, we found nothing totally definitive and maybe a few discrepant reports . . . But, I think it sure is fun to chew on the poems and savor every bite--"true, legend, or a bit of both!"