Separated from their home range, Map Turtles will attempt to return to the place where they were born.
The map turtle riding in the backseat of my car
doesn’t understand that I am taking her home.
She is pawing, rhythmically,
at the corner of her crate, just as she has been
doing for the last three months while her shell
re-grew under the pink epoxy
the rehab staff has applied. She is a hefty chunk,
The biggest book on my library shelf. She is
the unabridged OED,
all of Bullfinch’s mythology, She is the best part
of the only creation myth that I can believe in,
for I have seen turtles rise
from an icy pond to fan their feet in the first thin
rays of sun. Together we are looking for the place
where she was born,
that section of land she knows better than any
other. I turn off the radio, concentrate on the map.
The news is always the same anyway—
everyone trying to be somewhere else. But, tonight
I’m grateful to the intern who noted the mile marker
where she was found
and added this little sketch—three boulders on a tiny
beach, where the water often meets the road. I park
the car, turn on the flashers,
and then balancing the crate on the guard rail, I swing
each leg over and lift the crate down to the creek bed.
When I lift the door,
she startles for just a moment, and then steps out,
turning her head left and right. She is making hard
decisions. I glance over my shoulder
to check on the car—it’s a tight turn, a narrow road.
When I look down again, she is gone. Simply gone.
I push aside the weeds,
the honeysuckle, but she is nowhere to be found.
I imagine a slight ripple in the water—once again
she has returned to myth.
I watch for a moment, then fold the map, return
to the car, turn off the flashers and set
the GPS for home.
This poem first appeared in About Place (2023).
—
Cathryn Essinger is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Apricot and the Moon, and Wings, or Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight?, both from Dos Madres Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Terrain.org, About Place, and many other journals. She lives in Troy, Ohio where she raises butterflies.
