A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two Poems by Peggy Landsman

Peggy Landsman, USA

Enturtled

Olowalu, Maui, Hawaii

 

The gentlest turtles in the world

wear their shells in Hawaii.

 

The world is their water.

They are at home in their skin.

 

When a bearded old sociologist

on leave from winter in Buffalo

 

breaks, splashing, into their water,

his pale skin does not remind them

 

that somewhere else

it is snowing.

 

One of the more gregarious

swims alongside the stranger,

 

welcomes him to their world

of liquid reverie.

 

By the canal across the street

Pompano Beach, Florida

 

The three iguanas are here again.

They decorate the retaining wall,

They monitor the road.

 

I am brave.

I stand as close as four or five feet.

Their ancient looks intrigue and threaten.

 

They ride their claws and are gone.

 

Paper and plastic cups,

Grey-brown husks of coconuts

litter the canal.

 

Fractal patterns of oil slide

across the reflections of clouds

in water the color of mud mixed with rust.

Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in many literary journals and anthologies, including, most recently, The Hypertexts, Gyroscope Review, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press), SWWIM Every Day, and Mezzo Cammin. She currently lives in South Florida where she swims in the warm Atlantic Ocean every chance she gets. Visit her at peggylandsman.wordpress.com.

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