This other life

I’d like to have one, one cow, maybe,
in my sightline. One steady animal doing its thing.
But I do, don’t I? The tortoise
making his slow rounds of the house,
shuffling across the floor,
the tortoise someone else passed on to me
when they decided to get a dog.
Sometimes he looks in my direction.
Is it reproach? Probably not,
but the guilty response rises inside me all the same.
This life arrived, into my hands, this
responsibility. Do I know what to do? Have I done it?
Live, live, the jays call in the mornings, sharp
bright, blueblack cacophony.
The tortoise retreats under the sofa where it is safe,
or dark, or closer to the world of dust and nuance.
When he dies it will be on me.

ξ

Kelly Terwilliger is the author of a chapbook, A Glimpse of Oranges, and a book of poetry, Riddle, Fishhook, Thorn, Key. Her poems have appeared in various journals, most recently in Cider House Review, Adirondack Review, and Mainstreet Rag. She works as an oral storyteller in public schools, and is presently putting together an anthology of poems of address as well as a library of videotaped stories.