One evening on Jeopardy there was a question about butterflies in the Amazon that drank turtles’ tears. I looked this fact up and found that it was true, along with additional details. I thought this just had to be a poem. So I wrote “Turtle Tears” which has just appeared in the Spring/Summer 2025 of the literary journal Ep;phany. The edition is beautiful and I am so proud to have my work included with the other poems, stories, non-fiction pieces and art. Here is the poem:
Turtle Tears
A humid morning, and the slow
reptile makes her way toward
a flat stone above currents
heavy with leaves and debris.
A butterfly alights on her yellow
spotted forehead. Then two, and three,
lingering like afternoon light,
harvesting clear honey.
Not myth, but health: butterflies
of the interior Amazon, drink
turtles’ tears. Less-than-thread-width
legs balance on lids
while a tendril of tongue sips.
The turtle, intent on river mud,
barely notices as if touched
by nothing more
than the tail of a rainbow.
One theory has it that the winged ones
seek salt, existing as they do
so far from the ocean. Sodium,
the mineral of heartbeats.
Another suggests tears produce
medicine, universal serum
to ward off disease
since vision and wings
are keys to survival.
Neither insects or reptiles ponder
such things, just companions
on a river healing each other
within the grief of a vanishing world.