Patience

Zoe Boyer

Today I learn of pet turtles interred
in the yard, their wild counterparts
overwintering at pond’s bottom, and
I can’t stop imagining the woman
who wrangles nature to order with
a trowel in hand and a prayer to see
her damp-shelled young emerge
in the waxing light of spring.

What faith she must have in renewal,
that the earth will carry on heaving itself
over and around in a dizzying reel,
that we harbor the nascent seed
of all we need to strain claw and
sinew toward a new season.

But it’s always winter, lately.

Bury me in the garden. I want to linger
beneath the frost line in loam-dark,
in dirt-damped hush, roots whispering
against a body chilled still as a bulb,
waiting naked and numb for a first
inkling of sun to cleave the soil.

Only then will I claw raw-fingered,
stumble light-drunk from the earth
and quicken at the violent delight
of what the world’s turn has wrought:
blossoms disgorging themselves from
neat buds in a sputtering mess of petal,
red winged blackbirds screaming
talon-ready from the nest—my blood
near-boiling with the fervor of life returned.

Only then.

For now, let me rest easy; I’ve lost my faith.
But I’ll dream of those turtles sunk
deep in their slumber, slow-pulsed,
undoubting, and patient.

Zoe Boyer was raised in Evanston, Illinois on the shore of Lake Michigan, and completed her MA in creative writing among the ponderosa pines in Prescott, Arizona. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Poetry South, Kelp Journal, Plainsongs, RockPaperPoem, About Place, West Trade Review, and Little Patuxent Review, and has been nominated for Best of the Net.