September 2015
I'm a poet and writer living for the past six years in the South Jersey shore area. I moved here from North Jersey in 2009 after the 2008 death of my husband William J. (Bill) Higginson, author of The Haiku Handbook, to be closer to my daughter and family. I'm a mom, grandma, and sometimes poet-teacher for the NJSCA. My work has appeared in many journals, and in twenty-some books (including chapbooks). I read at the Dodge Festival in 2010, and have enjoyed two poetry residencies at VCCA (January 2011; March 2015). Please visit my website:www.2hweb.net/penhart and my blog: http://penhart.wordpress.com
Turtle Blessing
After the boy threw the pregnant turtle
hard against the brick wall
of the courtyard, screaming,
What are you, some kind of
fucking humanitarian?
to the girl who called him crazy,
the creature bounced off,
crawled a few feet, blood
seeping into the weeds
from her cracked shell,
and stopped.
She died last night,
was buried, her eggs gone
with her into the earth.
This morning in the mist
by Seeley's Pond, an ancient turtle,
huge and black on the wet grass,
turns its blunt head this way, that,
as it crawls up the slope
toward the road, and I bless it
against the crunch of its dark shell,
against the driver who will not swerve.
-the title poem from my collection Turtle Blessing (La Alameda Press, 1996)
Deer Crossing
This morning, the car in front of me
stops suddenly, waits
as five deer emerge from somebody's back yard,
crossing the frosty grass
to bound across the Boulevard
into the saplings of the Great Swamp.
I don't know what to do
about the pregnant doe
I counted dead by the side of the road
three mornings last week,
her white belly shining
in the sunrise;
about the young buck hit yesterday,
spun down midst broken glass,
weeping,
and police cars.
I only know the boundaries are blurring:
that buck whose antlers flowered on his head
like found money,
slept in your bed last night,
that doe in mine,
while we stumbled in our nakedness,
running on all fours
through thickets of dark trees
to freeze in the stunning light
of an unexpected clearing.
-also from Turtle Blessing
Lizard Light
The lizard on our sidewalk
has no tail again; by tomorrow
a new tail will be budding
from the blunt stump, while
in the yard's tall grasses
ants will share the piece
our cat abandoned.
Each month the moon is a lizard,
angles of sunlight biting it down
and giving it back until someday
the sun goes dark.
If my limbs were stars
they would burn across light years,
their fire still living
no matter when they sputtered down
to bone and ash;
but now I guard this lizard
who plays dead between my feet,
the light already shining
from its wound.
-the title poem from my book Lizard Light: Poems From the Earth (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1998)
After the boy threw the pregnant turtle
hard against the brick wall
of the courtyard, screaming,
What are you, some kind of
fucking humanitarian?
to the girl who called him crazy,
the creature bounced off,
crawled a few feet, blood
seeping into the weeds
from her cracked shell,
and stopped.
She died last night,
was buried, her eggs gone
with her into the earth.
This morning in the mist
by Seeley's Pond, an ancient turtle,
huge and black on the wet grass,
turns its blunt head this way, that,
as it crawls up the slope
toward the road, and I bless it
against the crunch of its dark shell,
against the driver who will not swerve.
-the title poem from my collection Turtle Blessing (La Alameda Press, 1996)
Deer Crossing
This morning, the car in front of me
stops suddenly, waits
as five deer emerge from somebody's back yard,
crossing the frosty grass
to bound across the Boulevard
into the saplings of the Great Swamp.
I don't know what to do
about the pregnant doe
I counted dead by the side of the road
three mornings last week,
her white belly shining
in the sunrise;
about the young buck hit yesterday,
spun down midst broken glass,
weeping,
and police cars.
I only know the boundaries are blurring:
that buck whose antlers flowered on his head
like found money,
slept in your bed last night,
that doe in mine,
while we stumbled in our nakedness,
running on all fours
through thickets of dark trees
to freeze in the stunning light
of an unexpected clearing.
-also from Turtle Blessing
Lizard Light
The lizard on our sidewalk
has no tail again; by tomorrow
a new tail will be budding
from the blunt stump, while
in the yard's tall grasses
ants will share the piece
our cat abandoned.
Each month the moon is a lizard,
angles of sunlight biting it down
and giving it back until someday
the sun goes dark.
If my limbs were stars
they would burn across light years,
their fire still living
no matter when they sputtered down
to bone and ash;
but now I guard this lizard
who plays dead between my feet,
the light already shining
from its wound.
-the title poem from my book Lizard Light: Poems From the Earth (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1998)
©2015 Penny Harter