POETRY

I Am Not Here, Not Really

Free verse

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Cyclone whatever. Rains in sheets.
The ponds may slip their banks,
we think.

Instead, we find four
slippery pond turtle hatchlings
clambering to reach the water.

We lift them
one by wriggling one
and into the water
they go.

I don’t know if hawks
eat baby pond turtles.

She perches this
day-after-cyclone day
atop a dead pine, perhaps
eyeing the Muscovy ducklings,
all six, curiously delighted
with a rain puddle.

I flap my arms. A nuisance
that drives the hawk to air.
I don’t know why I did that.

At one a.m. I wake, make my
way outside, an apparition,
steadfast in my silence.
One cannot wake up
every other one,
I remember sourly.