What did I want to do when I came back
to write — to detail the drift — two wild hares
a dead mouse, a tiny beautiful owl
one of the hares chewed up and now this —
a tortoise’s muddy back — what good
what good were those early harbingers —
fragility, death — given my helplessness
while all along the tortoise was somewhere
but where in the absence of visible water
except for run-off. The road’s ditch.
Ethel Rackin is the author of four books of poetry: The Forever Notes (Parlor Press, 2013); Go On (Parlor Press, 2016); Evening (Furniture Press, 2017); and In Time (Word Works Books, forthcoming 2025). A MacDowell fellow, she is a professor at Bucks County Community College.
Poet’s Corner is curated by Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus Tom Mallouk and supported by a grant to the Bucks County Herald Foundation made possible by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall.
To submit a poem for consideration, email it to Heraldpoetscorner@gmail.com. If the poem has been previously published, please say where it first appeared.
Note from the curator: Poetry Lovers: please attend a special event Tuesday April 30 at the Doylestown Library hosted by The Friends of Doylestown Library. The theme is “Poetry and Repair: Poems that Heal.” This is an open mic event. Pre-registration is encouraged at https://calendar.buckslib.org/event/11600084.
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