At the bottom of our hill, near the pond,
a painted turtle
plods across our quiet road.
I do not help her.
She is small as a saucer, and the dog
is already salivating, straining towards her.
An hour later, my daughter
chatters in from first grade, tells me
there’s a painted turtle
at the bottom of our hill, near the pond,
its shell crushed, its head
still moving.
I get my coat.
She frees her hand as we approach,
chirps, “See?
There’s nothing we
can do.”
So we do nothing
but kneel
beside the broken
body, the unblinking amber eye.
This poem first appeared in Contour Poetry Magazine.
—
Jennifer L Freed is the author of When Light Shifts, a 2022 finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, BODY, Rust and Moth and other journals, and have been nominated for Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize, and the Orison Anthology. jfreed.weebly.com
