Puccini Plays on Turtle Island
This morning I cleaned house and did laundry —
the underwear drawer well-stocked and tidy again.
Then it was my favorite path — through the woods
and into the used bookstore, on to the corner
cafe and home again where my sweetheart
bakes bread and has put on opera — arias
from the deep, perhaps the very same deep
the wild-eyed woman on the cliffs of Mendocino
told me she was trying to find her way out of.
Outside, the bird feeder is full. The cold trough
continues to push down from Alaska, keeping
the pear tree’s buds closed in on themselves,
lost in thought. The gray world out the window
is at peace with herself, even as she knows
the atmospheric river will continue to wash
all her loves downstream. What’s left
of my friends have scattered — Italy, Costa Rica,
the Otherworld, Japan. It seems I am meant
to sit still in this well-swept house —
in this eye of turbulent absence. It comes clear
that no one can save us from falling
from the edge. And now I think maybe
we are ferried on the back of a great turtle after all —
a tottering benevolent beast, content with time
and its machinations, content
to paddle over the channels of dark matter,
to hobble across the starry way.
forthcoming in Chautauqua Review, who have given this poem a 2021 Pushcart Nomination