Day of the Turtle

Monday 11th April 2011

Laundromat – towels. Cold wind. Rain clearing. Mild to high headache.
Ramona Koval: The Book Show – on Persian manuscripts of love poetry
* Heterodox? – what does that mean in humanistic terms?
Firdausi – Shahnama – 60,000 couplets!

Crossed border to SA early this arvo.
Postcard to a failing friendship from Blue Lake in Mount Gambier.
The sun is setting under the grey sky: I am over it,
but the colour of the water is still
quite stunning.

I have pulled off the highway
further down
beside it
into a rest zone.
Head on pillow.
Pillow half on esky,
half on dashboard.
Feet at the wheel,

* I made this to stand for a table.
I can’t stand sitting on the floor.
My legs ache.

view of the empty sky through the windscreeen,
and a rear-view of the rear-view mirror.
Night then. Hugs and love.

Dreaming when I stopped
on the main road out of Portland
to rescue a turtle crossing.

It stunk of fermenting citrus and meat
like high heaven.

There was a truck coming up,
and the road I was on
only had enough room on the side
for the turtle.

I lobbed the turtle
at my brake pedal,
my arse in my seat,
and hit the accelerator.

“Going to Portland?”, I asked.
The turtle stunk back.

Then I was carried on a ferry
in the dark
across the Glenelg River,
drove off the other side,
and kept going until
I woke up
down from Blue Lake
in Mount Gambier
with an aching back
to turn over.

7pm: another 7.1 earthquake in Japan.
Tsunami Alert.
Turtle in the floor
and on my fingers.