Turtle tracks and the other side of the hydrangea bushes

We named our turtle Fred.
We picked her up by her
shell in an attempt to teach
her how to fly but she never grew
crow-wings. She could cross the yard--
bent knees and head down
humming something about a creek 
something about a sister or a brother
or about the color of the leaves
floating on the water in October like
boats down the river sticks.
She was crying something about 
where she thought she might have been born.
Between two rocks. There was water
and there was the sound of trees
cracking their knuckles.
We watched her crawl-- 
shift-- stagger-- moan to the 
edge of our brownie-pan of
scratchy-grassed suburbia
looking beyond our neighbor's hydrangea
bushes and calling "stream stream!
do you see me mother?"-- 
only to be lifted back to 
the blue and purple kiddie pool where
she spent her summers.
She scrawled poetry with the claws on 
her back legs-- tally marks
in the plastic hull of the pool--
doggie paddled around the parameter
of her sun-bathing rock. She
patrolled-- tucked war paint 
in the streaks of red behind her
ears and grimaced with her beak
when I tried to smile at her. 
I called her "sister" and she hissed--
caressed her shell with my palm
and cooed, "darling, darling, I'm sorry..."
I sat on the stone by her cove
and waited for her to peer out from her shell.
She blinked and shed tears
for the goldfish she had eaten--
their scales still sticky on her chin--
fins floating around her head--
I played harmonica and asked 
her if she liked it. She waddled
over to me and told me that she
knew her mother was over there--
over there past the hydrangeas
past the lawns
somewhere between two rocks
and creek water-- that she
knew a God there-- a sister--
scratched--scratched--scratched at 
the walls of the kiddie pool and 
cried
Eden, Eden, Eden, Eden
She waited out lightning and thunder
in that pool as her mother shrieked 
to her from the clouds calling her
past the hydrangea bushes.
It's been a year since she followed
that voice over the wall of her 
pool and her pool is still there
haunted by the ghosts of devoured
goldfish tails and tales from lightning
cracked shells and shed turtle 
scales and I know it's been a year
but I'll follow her
tracks from the corner of the yard
meet her in Eden, Eden, Eden, Eden 
And she'll tell me she found her 
mother and her sister but that they 
were only stones-- rocks 
caught under the bellies of October
leaves-- she had been clawing towards
that Eden and the water sang harmonica there.
And I told her I was sorry she had
seen so many storms from the rim 
of that kiddie pool--
in cased in plastic
and she said it was okay that
she had missed me-- that I should
climb over the hydrangea bushes.
I'll go someday-- I'll go back to my mother--
someday someday someday
become a turtle writing poetry 
with my back legs through the summer.
Become a stone.
Become a sister.