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Turtle
by Adrian Gibbons
Koesters
The dump trucks and
earth trucks barreled by
a slim strip of grass
next to the highway curb
where I walked alone,
where a painted turtle
had died after giving
birth or losing its long
way.
I reached down to see if
by lifting
it would make a move to
show it hadn’t gone—
and maybe the
platyhelmynths jumped
from its leather back to
my wary hands—
the body not still, but
stiff, a crimson
square showing from its
belly like disease.
I don’t know where I’d
have put it had
it moved—back to the
larger lawn,
from where it progressed
away? In that
I’d make a choice for
it, wouldn’t I,
that it had gone awry,
its heading toward
the larger traffic the
wrong-headed thing
to do? My walks are both
away and to,
a bluff determined to
stop giving in,
though I know it’s not
nothing I want of you,
and nothing all of what
you required,
not from me, but from
the good late friend
you believed I might
be—and as I wiped my
hands
I thought, then let us
walk a little further
out
until it’s clear that
one or more of us is
right.
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