the place of turtles
Milla van der Have

                  or more so of legs thrashing
         through reckless coral
and salt water wash

                  a place of scythes, a place
         of mouths like open moons
of how we each

                  carry our own ghosts with us
         like those blind fish following
the almost drowned

                  we are what we leave
         the outline of towns charred
on the seabed, only a matter

                  of what comes to pass with us
         the bodies, the heavy threadbare
light

         —you know how quiet it is
                           when you drown
                                    as when you’re only sinking

                                    to where it’s still
                           and waiting,
         as close to death as it is to life—

                  it’s not the weight that pulls you down
         but the weightlessness,
being held only

                  by whatever you have failed
         before, the water-shamans
the slow moving paragons

                  of sheer beginning
         of trying to come up

                    untouched

---

Milla van der Have’s Comments

Some poems have a very clear place of origin and for this poem, that place is Akumal, Mexico. We went snorkeling and swimming with sea turtles there, and while I enjoyed the majesty of those animals, I was also bothered with 150 tourists bobbing greedily over a feeding turtle. That sort of jumpstarted the poem. The name Akumal btw means “the place of turtles.”

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