Turtle and Outcast (Eliot Cardinaux)

Nature is a rock that can be entered
through an outcast’s crop of ragweed.
Already he has found the substance to be chilled. 
And in the cup the smoke has turned
30 years, 40 years, 50 years back
to where the tree made its root,
and bird-song has reached across the universe
into the outcast’s ear and through his garden.

Let’s leave this place, it’s dull,
cries the outcast into the black hole.
And he and the turtle he had known all along
started off for that long forsaken home.


                        December 15^th, ’10