That day was a deep green dream that I hold tight.
We would hear bass jump, breaking the silence, and the flutter-buzz of bar-room-neon dragonflies.
TURTLE HUNTING BY DOUG TANOURY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 131
As boys, my brother and I would hunt turtles
on Rondeau Bay in a small gray boat
that we would row out to a far shore
where cattails grew fat and long on slender stems.
We would hear bass jump, breaking the silence,
and the flutter-buzz of bar-room-neon dragonflies.
Lily pads pancaked across the shallows,
landing pads for the aerial and aquatic bugs
that owned the water on that steamy summer day.
The pads were punctuated by white water lilies
floating graceful and brilliant in the sunlight.
They trembled and drifted off as we disturbed them,
dipping the oars with a soft splash.
Water droplets glimmered as they fell from the oars
like the shimmer of a school of silver minnows.
I squinted as I searched floating logs and outcropping
tree limbs for the dark polished jade of turtle shells,
for the turtles loved to stretch themselves out reptilian style
in the hottest part of the day sunning themselves.
They would watch us, listless and unmoving, their heads still
as black twigs protruding from the coffee-stained water.
That day was a deep green dream that I hold tight,
of that August afternoon on the water
in the sun of late summer, that lingering honey-amber
memory of us, two boys in a boat reluctant to row back home.
DOUG TANOURY
There is poetry everywhere. There was a time when I would take one subject and render it differently in poem after poem, like Monet painting haystacks over and over in a different light. I used Avon Catalogs (I am dating myself) to recycle their lip gloss and nail polish colors into poems. I used the same process with the racehorses’ names at Hollywood Park. I have been inspired by the dishes on Chinese menus. I did a lot of ekphrasis after I read Williams’s Pictures from Brueghel. I think it complements some characteristics of my style, like the use of vivid images and a lilting lyricism to create tone/atmosphere. I worked with a group of poets at Macomb Community College, Detroit, for about 10 years, and I credit them with educating and training me.