Suffering the Unattainable
Large sea turtles and some whales
will outlive us, water a manifestation of wind in
another dimension.
I had to use the shovel to hack at the wood, had to grab
a hatchet, down deep in the hole. The oak pitched around
like a ship’s mast, or I was no longer alive; perhaps I was yet
to be
all over again, though I kept recalling your name. The verdurous roots.
Copyright @ 2014 by David Dodd Lee. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on July 16, 2014.
“The world is split, and in more than half of it passion plays itself out in slow motion, a creaturely nobility is in place. I live on the water, and if I can catch sight of a large softshell turtle turning its way back to deep water as my canoe crosses over it, I consider myself lucky. In the third line the poem turns slightly frantic. The speaker must act. It’s a poem about desire/beauty and the problem/gift of mortality. It’s therefore also a love poem. And also plays with ideas of reincarnation. When man and creature meet on a path, we know we are in the same world, although I feel like the interloper. Sometimes you meet a human being who is similarly wild at heart.”
—David Dodd Lee