The neighborhood is quiet.
On this Sunday, mid-May.
Everyone, somewhere else.
Parking lot at Salus, empty.
But I, not alone.
First, a meeting with geese.
Scattering cereal.
Self-appointed job on weekends.
When weekday goose whisperer not around.
Next, encounters with squirrels, bunnies, chipmunks.
Scampering among bushes, ground covers.
Listening to tunes of robins, cardinals, wrens.
Flapping from branch to branch.
Catching sight of a furry, red fox.
His eyes peering at mine.
Zipping past, disappearing into a breezeway.
Noticing a brown garden snake.
Slithering through arborvitae.
Some frogs along the edge of a pond.
A lone box turtle.
Whose color honors the pattern tortoise shell.
Brown with yellow, amber patchwork.
Just sitting there in the road.
Lost?
Disoriented?
Displaced?
I feel a sudden urge to save it.
Take it with me.
Remembering turtles in my childhood.
Residing in a grassy pen out back.
But now our house, small.
This turtle needs to roam.
Through grasses, shrubs, foliage,
till it finds its home.
Lynn Benjamin
May 20, 2024
