EVOLUTION
They say in the Galapagos
there is a giant turtle
that will wait a hundred years
for the right female to arrive.
Darwin with his notebook
behind a rock recording
the slow motion
of their natural selection.
The turtle groom, his pointed nose
pressed against her reaching neck.
Her green mosaic shell
locked in the curl of his claws.
Day and night they mate,
twenty-four vague hours.
Then he moves across the sand
back to the merging sea.
Was it some calculation to survive?
Or as he swims beneath the waves,
in the cold core of his brain,
does he remember her watery blue eyes?
HALF
I could not give you all of me,
so I gave you half.
You did not seem to mind.
You gave me half of you.
Our half-full life
was not unkind.
Often we would laugh
and do what other couples do.
But two halves did not make a whole,
and in our waning years,
our lives tilted apart.
We lived in separate hemispheres.
It is the disappointment
of looking up at night
and seeing a half moon.
You know the other half is there
sitting in the dark.
Now,
as we grow old
as we grow old
and I will lose you all too soon,
I hold you tightly through the night.
~ For Meri
