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      April 25, 2021Watching Lions Spare a Turtle on the Same Day that Derek Chauvin Was Found Guilty of MurderMichael Meyerhofer

      My friend sends me the video:
      lions kneeling at a watering hole,
       
      chins speckled in blood,
      just trying to rinse it all down
       
      beneath a sun that whitens
      anything it can’t burn.
       
      Then this turtle paddles up
      and starts licking their beards,
       
      their jaws, like it can’t stop
      tasting another’s hunger.
       
      For a moment, tongues wrestle.
      Then, somehow, it happens:
       
      the terrapin swims clear,
      lions exit on claws like triggers,
       
      and it costs us nothing to forget
      what graffities the dry grass—
       
      the zebra with its torn flanks,
      the sentence of bleached bones.

      from Poets Respond

      Michael Meyerhofer

      “Like countless other Americans, I was struggling to wrap my mind around everything associated with George Floyd’s death and the Derek Chauvin trial—all the outrage, the sadness, the history, the nuance—when totally out of nowhere, I had one of those weird moments where you encounter a completely unrelated story and they kind of blend together, clarifying each other in a way that’s almost impossible to put into words except through poetry. Once I felt that connection, the trick was trying to shove my own ego off its soapbox and just let the poem do what it wanted, since this seems like one of those moments where it’s more important to be a camera than a commentator.”

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