Musings on the life of a turtle in a cistern |
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The world is a thirty-foot circle of brick and mortar fashioned by Indian labor red and gray. There are dry parts for sunning cracks for borders between the territories moss-pond where turtle feeds and sinks unseen except by skeeters on the surface and yellow-flower forests on the northwest side where the life pours in. Above the world the sky spreads blue or gray strange faces peer like rising moons (does turtle know they have a life beyond his red-gray rim?) and wind howls past, alive but never enters. - S.E.M. |
The turtle in this poem lived in
a real cistern--above--on the grounds of La Purisima
mission outside Lompoc, CA. A few pictures of the mission may be viewed here.
copyright 2002, bardsmaid