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| Seven Turtles On the Withlacoochee last Saturday, seven turtles in graduated sizes queued on a log, routine as the osprey nests, empty this time of year, normal as the occasional alligator, its blunt nose and hooded eyes half-submerged, as are most fears most of the time, until a plane slams into a building or a son can’t be found. We are spoiled, you and I, guilty of saying of the good dark bread on our plates not, how delicious, but where’s the rest. And so with the osprey nests, the turtles, even the palms leaning so low they parallel the water. But now a wood stork crosses our bow. And another. And when we look left, to where river-flow complicates into cypress creek, we see it: hundreds of wood storks with their back-edged wings, hunched liked priests in the trees. And I remember a morning in Cairo years ago, when the veiled figure next to me on the side of the aisle that was all women turned, and took my western hands in hers as if my fingers might be breakable, as if she loved them, and said in the only language we both understood: Pass this on. Lola Haskins (c) Lola Haskins 2006 |
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