My name is Podrigotuma and a few years ago I taught a week at a Lutheran

retreat center in Washington state called Holden Village. It's up in the cascades.

It's overwhelming. I saw a bear within the first half hour of being there and

all around in the middle of this extraordinary, almost outpined beauty. There was

the smell of smoke in the air and it was the first time in my more recent life

when I was moved to try to write something that was about what I could see but

also about the threat that lurked underneath and not a threat indigenous to

the earth. A threat imposed on the earth by people.

Song for the Turtles of the Gulf by Linda Hogan.

We had been together so very long. You willing to swim with me just last month.

Myself merely small in the ocean of splendor and light, the reflections and

distortions of us. And now when I see the man from British petroleum lift you up

dead from the plastic bin of death, he with a smile, you burned and covered

with red black oil, torched and pained. All I can think is that I loved your life.

The very air you exhale when you rose old great mother. The beautiful swimmer,

the mosaic growth of shell so detailed, no part of you simple, meaningless or

able to be created by any human. Only destroyed. How can they learn the secret

importance of your beaten heart, the eyes of another intelligence than ours,

maybe greater with claws, flippers, plastron? Forgive us for being thrown off

true. Forgive our trespasses in the eddies of water where we first walked.

The first time that I read this poem I remember feeling like I was brought into a

moment of real stillness and a mixture of lament and anger and concern as well

...