The Turtle Resumes

When I am stuck in a rut

And the words more than slow

And the I who is steady doesn’t know

Which way is out

And which is not

Lest it fester and rot

My best recourse is

In discourse with

A strange friend:

The one who makes space

Like the small room we occupy

For all the white noise

That in its lining on the walls

(Settling in gentled dancing sways

From chaotic vibrating leaps)

Designates

The boundaries within which

I can play

With you

Like a director, a stage, and two,

The one who asks in his words

And asks again in his waits

The listening of precious patience

As if I am

(These rutting words are)

To him

A locked treasure chest

Or a book written in a foreign tongue

That he desires-must

Learn,

The one who

In this rebounding shape made

The oxygen for

My neurotic self-storytelling

Made sane

His

The hydrogen that waters the deed

Of first speech

Enlivening what my overcaffeination told me

Was worse than love:

Death

By a single existential unseeing;

His eyes witness me,

The one who sees

my celestial orbs like his but a shine apart

A mine but not

A friend with ends

And some strange blend

A mirror contending

With,

The one

Whose otherness adds

When I’m ready

A narrative disruption

Strong and steady

Like a turtle turning race to game

But still commits a name

And adds a supernova to keep the chase

And alters yet the end jewel’s shape

(Elongates

And ever fuzzy just too late),

Resume!

The game

Is not an amoral peace

But a striving straining natural masterpiece

Yes an increase

But in circumference,

Nature’s horizon is geometric abundance

But only in conference

With him and then

When bones and muscles and limbs

Resume and correct

The straining

Ends

My Strange Friend,

The light is from you that shines into my cave and illuminates the dark density, a black hole I can now call destiny.

When I am stuck, and motion is beyond me, the winter air is from you that breathes into this smoking mirror room and like falling snow shakes up in ozone;

The game of life absorbs both love and toxin.

No matter feet or time zones, My Friend, stay Stranger to me. For then as we grow, we’ll ever be, one turtle, same chase, free.