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On the other side of the world from you,
I spied a sign, Careful Turtles Crossing
Which made me want to pick up the phone
Or write a line – further away as I am from you
oddly, when out of the country.

I imagined what you would say
Something daft and ordinary
Like what a laugh, something banal
And reassuring, if you could,
If you could hold a phone or write a line.

But you are further away than that
and in a foreign country where the lights are out
and the dark comes down in the day.
Oh, your night, I imagine, is luminous,
full of company. Perhaps the dead

are more accompanied than the living.
Yesterday, I saw one. I saw a turtle crossing
as calm, as slow, as leathery as anything.