Turtle Pond (poem)

Turtle Pond

The summersweet has wrapped the path to the pond, all birds do sing.

The urbane dog walkers are curt, eye contact is brief.

On the dock, pond-lifers: tan, drink, smoke--don't say a thing,

"Pond life" in perfect cursive, on a defunct raft-- idling with the breeze.

A lone swimmer, breast-stroking, dock to dock,

Like a watermill--bearing water aloft.

Her hands descend in a swoon,

Deep dark water dripping silver in the June,

She silently and steady swims,

Over methane flower funnels,

Through beautiful blue cyano blooms,

And gangly weeds like boyish limbs--

rising up from a thick black doom,

That no little brown bat or swallow skims,

Nor her edges sipped by raccoons.

"Did you know that her mother..." one of the pond's refrains,

With crosses for vigils on the parkway,

But Veeries sing the unsolved hymns, to mark the blue-vervain.

Who would have known that this is city?

As the green frog plucks his low E-string,

Her momentary view is pretty,

With cattails and white pine fringe,

Until you notice her red eyes and pity,

Her tears are E. coli-tinged.

And four foot eels fleeing asphyxiating mud from deep,

Catatonic gluts in puddles--journeying to breathe,

There are no sirens, nor man-at-arms coming to her side--

Until her wan neck, is emerald wreathed,

and silver-tinted blue bottle flies--

have investigated the deceased.

Her dry rot docks gesture across,

And wave to another in wind-bent wands of hemlock,

She swims the placid, demure septic shroud,

to the other "no swimming allowed."

Her daughters, vernal pools--fairies last whereabouts;

Never to be seen after spring, only reoccur with autumn rain,

But in between the grim, where the culvert is all but drained,

A cardinal flower grows--finally a necklace not in vain.

Jul 2026. Keith J Collard

Dedicated to Amy Lord and all the others