Shells

Shells

Remembered landscapes are left in me
The way a bee leaves a sting,
Hopelessly, passion placed, ….
All forms of landscape are autobiographical.

Charles Wright – “All Landscape is Abstract and Tends to Repeat Itself.”


I watch the tortoise on the television
with the surrounded-by-supposed-slum family
that I am living with now.

on the TV we see:

Hanging cliffs
taunted by tempting to conquer
to be conquered waves
boiled by angry lava rivers
expulsed by volcanoes
no longer able to keep it inside.

My treated like temporary sister says:
“That is the tortoise’s way to
Protect himself,
he hides under his shell.”

We shes could not help but agree.

I look outside;
it is bright and has been half the day.
Once and nine tenths again,
the sun re-introduces its beauty
from behind the clouds
making the thanks-to-the
too- much-rain
green grass
shine
and the aluminum,
can’t-keep-water-out
roofs glisten
like stones guiding
giants up this river hillmountain
that I find myself living on.

Children are out,
and one carries a turquoise toy
tortoise car up the hill
another runs a got-more-life-in- it
bike tire
down the rollercoaster road.

When too much rain shifted mud, cracking houses,
Shes did more than just pe(e)ck.