In Noonday Sun

I walked the same sand, the same way

when I saw a turtle, both head and shell yellowgold.

His thick feet paddled the beach behind him

until he slipped into the greygreen mystery of water.

This is the gift of an open heart.

Not desire. Not fulfillment.

Not the spectacle of grandeur

where grandeur is known to be.

But seeing the life before us

and loving whatever we make of it

and all that we cannot.

*

Biography

Linda Opyr, the Nassau County Poet Laureate 2011-13, is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Atlanta Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Crannog and The New York Times. Poems of hers appear in the current issues of Poetry Ireland Review (125), edited by Eavan Bolan, and Antiphon. Four poems will appear in The Seventh Quarry, published in Wales, in 2019.

In 2017 she was a featured poet in the Bailieborough Poetry Festival, County Cavan.  The poet has also been featured in the 2012 Walking With Whitman Series at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and been a keynote speaker/poet at the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf.