TURTLE EYE LAND

By Robert Dunkel

© 2026

We awaken daily, and with each new moon

We traverse the numinous night country…

Not entrapped by circular logics nor their cycles

We are launched into our dreams of a New Earth.

Ascending and descending we settle in for the long night.

For it is not the darkness that we fear but our own incongruities

Those open ended parenthesis that somehow fail in definition

Haunt us like the last vision of a dream that in turning over is gone.

Hard wired for survival we are lost and dumbfounded by the niceties

The unnecessary admonishments of culture that have weakened our resolve.

Carrying the weight of that world we become slow but staunchy like the Turtle…

Our Island is the memory of the muds and the stormy decades of destruction

That became eons of envy for all that was lost but never lost forever…

The Eden of Zep Tepi, also neither lost nor forlorn, guides us like the stars

It is ever, both map and territory, for that which is always returning in time.

That memory and vision remain and is retained in each new lifetime…

We come like the Sun, back into focus, as we spiral forth in endless cymatic wonder.

The patterns are familiar and not then, we wince and wiggle and ask ourselves why

Ask for an understanding that never is quite complete because there is only change…

So we harken Yugas and millennia, ages of geological chaos amidst periods of calm

To find the rhyme or reason of us here now and still we know so very little….

That turtle carries for us the thirteen moons, the remembrance of balance and patience.

Always awakening to another Spring, it knows the baggage and it carry the scars

Yet deeper than that reptilian mind lies the codes of conduct that urges it onward…

Overhead and ever vigilant the immortal stars are calling all of us to gather and sing

Together in this dance is the memory of lands, some torn and askew and some underwater

Lands decimated by forces way beyond control and some still pristine and new…

It all depends on our point of view!

There is no summary nor surmise that makes this journey simpler than Love.

We are here awhile to be witness, to watch and record the seasons and signs

To raise the children to also wonder, more than ask why, and to be kind.

So feel the beauty and blessings that surround us in spite of the cacophonies about

Be resolute and calm and do carry on your back all that you cherish and hold

For that new day is coming and it is almost here and it is asking little of you and I…

You see it is a new seed that has sprouted amidst the humus and hubris of time

A seeding that knows yet never queries but remembers always where the Sun is

Always feels connected to those immortal stars that shine and knows its purpose.

It knows that it is here awhile and will leave knowing it has seeded the future.

Can any of us then not?

Feel the Earth move beneath your feet

Feel the rains and snow and sleet

Know in your heart you are complete

And together again we all shall meet…