"After the Turtle Years" by Len Harrison (Cumberland County)

Before the turtle years — 
the chrysalis years, the metamorphic years, the churning years — I stood in my garden of good and evil, 
pulling weeds that didn’t belong in the sweet
tomatoes and dumping them under the
crabapple tree 
where they should have grown. 
Before the turtle years — the flooding years, 
the storming years — I trained my gaze on the sky 
for why wouldn’t I look up? 
Why shouldn’t I look up? 

When arrived the turtle years — 
the folding years, the burning years, the learning
years — the forest devoured me whole. 
The tissue in my lungs could photosynthesize and my veins
became roots. When arrived the turtle years — the never-ceasing 
fool’s spring years — I spoke to the sea 
and it spoke back to me. 
The waves taught me 
everything I needed to know; 
everything I couldn’t grasp on my own. 
How to change my focus. 

After the turtle years — 
the odd years, the lawless years, the godless years — 
I sit in the chalk dust of stars and write like a river. 
After the turtle years — the changing years, 
the rearranging years — I keep my ribs in place,
remembering the soil. I call to the sea, and it laughs at me, 
rising and crashing, and I know 
my place is wherever I make it to be. 
I brave the walk in the dark, tracing the outline of
the land and my mind.

---

Len Harrison is the Junior Class Poet of the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine, and has been a writer for as long as he can remember. When not writing, they can be found reading science fiction novels at the beach, working backstage at Franklin Theatre, or hiking the Midcoast with friends and family. This poem, “After the Turtle Years”, is a reflection on his life since the COVID-19 pandemic.