TURTLEYou, little Atlas, walking stone,rustle your way through summer’s tattle; baffled, cast your marigold eye on marvels; what was oak, leaf-loam, laurel roars, a blacktop road. Stop. Wait up. Dogflies and deerflies know what softness pulses at the core. We root earth-deep and sleeping puts us wise. You, fossil, you keep on your carapace, your hinged plastron. Cricket-picker, you are always home. Coyotes might balk your brave straddle, or a rusted truck skidding the blind curve below these yaupon hollies slap you clean over into mottled, tessellated bone. Behold: I scoop you up and set you, marching, down beneath crepe myrtles. Shun macadam, will you? You’re Triassic. I ask this: Outlast curbs, fences, me, and traffic. Kansas Quarterly; Spikenard First published as one of four poems in Nebraska Review; also available in the chapbook Spikenard, Main Street Rag Editor’s Choice Award winner. Return to Index of Jeannette Barnes poems
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