let an old woman cross
though she has become
obese and ugly with age
though you feel no attraction toward her
though your thighs do not tense at the sight of her
though you have no wish to touch her
she has borne the likes of you
many times over
her pregnant bulk shuffling
one side to the other
growing bigger and rounder even
as her eyesight gets worse
she has borne the likes of you
in clutches twenty and thirty deep
pushing your careless ilk from her most sensitive parts
with each egg feeling only the stony press
of the next one and the next one and the next one
she has borne the likes of you
and she has abandoned you each time
for her own safety
and for yours
leading away
the searching teeth that would gnaw your bones like sticks of sugar candy
in deep river mud
she planted her flag decades ago
she has grappled
with fisherman's hook and dog's tooth
and now struggles against the weight of her own age
forcing clawed foot forward
scraping plastron over pavement
pulling scarred algaed shell and ridged tail
away from her home
she comes now to bear you again.
(Image belongs to SomethingAwful.com poster Robo Olga. Used with permission.)
The poem was written specifically for the image. In the Critterquest thread on the SA forums, poster Robo Olga contributed this image of the incredibly angry snapping turtle that crossed their family's lawn one day. Obviously old and likely a pregnant female, this turtle is ugly and monstrous, but she has so far outlived (as her size seems to indicate, if I'm judging it correctly) everyone in my age group.
ReplyDeleteShe reminds me of the female snapper I encountered last summer who had just come from laying her eggs. I helped her cross the road, keeping well out of her way because she was understandably mad as hell. Since people tend to speed down the road she was on, I stood a few feet away from her side so drivers would definitely see me and slow down. One driver stopped to ask if I'd called animal control yet, and it really shocked me. While the corporate park the turtle was leaving was new, the bog at the edge of it, to which she was obviously returning, has been there for ages. She was older than the driver's car, and yet it was she who needed to displaced.
Dorky confession - I did pet her shell when she stopped to chill for a while. The first time she let me do it; the second time she started snapping. She only had one eye and a big, very old scar where the other one used to be, but despite her limited vision, she still had an excellent sense of where she needed to launch herself to bite.
The turtle in Robo Olga's photo is much older and much bigger than the one I encountered. She ain't a beauty, but I think she's cool as hell.
In their permission to use this photo, Robo Olga comments, "[...]people should never go near snapping turtles because they are the grumpiest things ever." While this is advice I don't generally follow, it's still good advice. These things are nature's badasses, relatively unchanged since they shared their homes with dinsosaurs. If you get too close to them, it becomes startlingly easy to see how they've endured for so long.
Rock on, mama turtle.
I love this. The imagery is fantastic, and the prose reads like one of the old school fairy tales. I think the first three stanzas are the weakest, though. The language doesn't feel as natural and the rhythm is a little off. Just my opinion, though!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the critique! I agree that the first couple of stanzas' voice doesn't quite flow into the rest of it. And I consider rhythm one of my problem areas in general. When I did the poetry workshops mentioned in the FB note, rhythm was the element Lou said I needed to work on most.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you say the language of the first part isn't as natural. I agree. The first part was written very slowly, but once I got to the "she has borne..." segments, it all came much faster and more easily. The latter half was definitely my favorite part, in terms of the writing experience. I think one reason might be that it's the ultimate point I was striving toward. One of the things that fascinates me most about turtles & torts is the lack of familial relationships; even other reptilians like alligators, crocodiles, and snakes mother their young, but tortles (I love that word), to prevent predators from finding them and from knowing where the eggs are, leave immediately after laying. I think it's neat that the babies hatch and have to immediately go by their instincts instead of having an adult to help them. I wanted to put that in the poem but focus it on the idea of an old mother turtle who has mothered literally hundreds of new turtles over decades. She has to leave her home and go into a rapidly changing landscape to lay her eggs, but moment she's buried her eggs, she immediately goes back to the safety and dangers of her home without any idea of what will become of them, just like they'll grow up with no sense of her, even though she has lived longer than many humans do.
We should share work... your voice reminds me of Rimbaud.
ReplyDelete