Thomas Alan Orr

Turtle Rock

Thomas Alan Orr

In the ditch along the field a boulder, half-buried, impedes the summer mowing. It looms like a large leatherback turtle in a sea of weeds, not moving since the day a homesteader cleared this land with a team of mules, straining at their harness to drag it here.

Things block our way. We stub a toe, stumble, step back, take a turn. Sometimes we kick the rock, enraged, until our senses numb or we blunt the soul’s keen edge. The stone that dulls may also whet. Yield without surrender. Resist with grace.

Thomas Alan Orr's most recent collection is Tongue to the Anvil: New and Selected Poems (Restoration Press). His work has appeared in numerous journals. He works for a community development organization in Indianapolis and lives on a small farm in Shelby County where he raises Flemish Giant rabbits.