Sometimes mending a poem can feel like freeing
a large fish from a caul of plastic netting,
working away with only a pocket knife
while the fish thrashes about, suspicious
that every saving cut will end its life;
but then the fish turns out to be a turtle
with gashes on its verdant mottled limbs.
You might expect a modicum of gratitude
though you’d be wrong. No sooner disentangled
the brute turns tail and heads off out to sea.
But never fear. Someone with a turtle-spear
stands ready to gaff the ingrate. Will you look, he says,
at its clumsy flippers that aren’t at all
like fins or feathers. The least we can do is
put the poor thing out of its misery.
