Where will you find another
Garden now the storm falls
in folds of black crepe, bars
of the wicket door are closed
with a padlock, forever you’re
the lonely runner in the rain?
The turtle is slow, the eel fast,
the tarot woman said, raising
two cards to the screen. Already
you’ve lived a thousand years
in ten and so many miles still
to leap, to climb the six steps
of some hexagram that’s both
your life and a river, a current
running through and past you.
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and writer/editor. His fiction received the James D. Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation, and his poetry the Prospero Prize from Sharkpack Review.