The Real Turtle Soup

Robert Ronnow
The Happy Tectonics

The Real Turtle Soup

Is it the good turtle soup or merely the mock? --Cole Porter

It's only a paper-mache
moon, they say, too cool,
too full of interstellar space
to sympathize or stress about
lovers, kings and fools.

Or is it? According to Deutsch
the so-called final ignition
into outer space
is a product of man's meditations
moving, as if via gravitation

the magician to the other end
of the expanding universe. Sure,
in your computer. Meanwhile, nursed
in a nursing home, mewling and peeing
as accurately predicted by Shakespeare

my old Marine, an ex-sailor, bitter
at life's ending, waited
too long to dispatch with dignity.
All alone, as in Corbiere's poem,
old soldiers are fated

to fight unnecessary wars
as we all are. Except for the fact that
every helium and hydrogen atom
ever born or made (whatever you believe)
has taken positions, passionate

and predetermined as republicans and dobermans
over eons and epochs. Thus
I don't think it behooves us much to care
if we're getting too little clean air or
bacteria are better adapted than us. This

obsession with identity, survival
a name and a leg of lamb is lame
even uninspired. The entire universe
including the professional baseball season
is canceled when you're dead. No blame.