Turtles and Charter Fisherman

So last night I was reminded that April is national poetry month and NPR was asking what my favorite poem was. It happens to be this:

From sundials in the shade

Turtle

by Kay Ryan
(Our awesome current Poet Laureate)

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.

 from The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. © Grove Press, 2010.


It's not just that I love the poem, it's imagery the lyrical twists and turns and that I happen to love reptiles and own two box turtles. The first time I read this poem I was just awe struck, that moment of awakening and read it again and again, realizing that I haven't written poetry since high school.....

 So, what is your favorite poem or poet or piece of writing.... and when were you most inspired by it?


I was also struck by this report from another favorite fishing tidbit in the endless fight of SE long liners to protect their costly IFQ quotas I came across this report about the Elfin Cove Lodge.  And for my little back story, I used to work for ADF&G Sport Fish division in Juneau and also had a brief and thankfully short tenure as a TSA agent in Juneau and let me tell you these guys were packing in the fish boxes like nothing else... You would have thought they all had little fish shacks and their $4000 sport fishing trip to SE each year supplied their little restaurants to the hilt.  It always bothered me greatly and most of us knew that this has been happening for so long now it's about time that they actually did an investigation about it.  One tiny step in the right direction for all the IFQ holders, deckhands, families and friends!