The Tears Of Turtles

May 21

By John D Kelly

It’s all gone viral − this exponential
rise in grieving − under the shadows
of nineteen grinning corvids circling
like black vultures over nursing homes,
right over the tops of politicians heads,
over scandalous piles of corpses.

A daughter’s heart is doubly broken.

She’s not only missing
the calming smiles of a mother
but also the warming hugs of a father
she can now only dream of.

It leaves her streaming,
and she can’t turn the tap off.

Gushing spates make tiny rills
that are, for her,
like welcome, warm mini-waterfalls
of soft-focused memory.

But I can clearly see that they
wash and drain from her blood
that which retains the sacred wetness
of life –
that which the Scarlet Macaws
of Peru, nesting close to my home,
know they must fly so far to,
to hard-earn mine in clay licks
close to that great meander:
The Amazon River,
to feed their living chicks with
before they fledge, and fly.

I set up a butterfly clip and a drip,
and try, gently, to explain to her
that even the Common Blue Morphos
that lives its short life there,
somehow still knows it must drink . . .
from the saline tears of river turtles.

And I dream of my mother’s smile
and my father’s, too, many miles from
here; and soon I, too, am streaming.

Written Word ‘Heart’ poems

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