How many turtle effigies?

 Someone asks: "Do you have any idea how many turtle effigies there might be still standing?

How many turtle effigies?

Which kind of Effigy?

All of them?

I just don’t know…

 

I remember spotting turtles within the alleged “Estate Wall”

On the eastern border of the Institute in Washington CT

And thinking that’s a job for someone who isn’t me,

Counting all the possible turtle effigies in just this one massive construction,

This huge Snake Effigy, this Qusukqaniyutôk above the Shepaug River…

 

I call a boulder effigy of a box turtle “Turtle One”

Mostly because it was the first I clearly saw as Grandfather Turtle

-          One steps through a remnant of a row of stones

-          Into a mast forest zone to stand beside it,

-          Up above the planting fields and fish weir in Nonnewaug…

I call a snapping turtle effigy behind my old chicken coop “Turtle Two”

Mostly because it’s the second turtle effigy I could see

Ever since the chickens scratched it out of the farm trash

But I’ve never counted or assigned numbers to all the many turtle effigies

Which have made themselves known to me in those Stone Prayers…

 

There are turtle effigies on top of snake effigies way up high on hillsides

There are turtle effigies in the wetland gardens most people call swamps

And there are turtle effigies in the rows of stones that snake along in between the two.

Sometimes one finds a Diamondback Terrapin effigy up above a saltmarsh,

Sometimes one finds a musk turtle effigy by the ruins of an old saw mill

Sometimes one crosses the river on the backs of turtles (that are also snake scales),

Where eel baskets were still placed in the dark of the autumn moon just over 300 years ago...

Sometimes there’s an effigy right there,

-           In the middle of what one thought of as a colonial construction

-          In the middle of where two took wedding vows

-          In the middle of where their children and grandchildren played

-          Over by where someone may one day sprinkle some of one’s ashes…

 

Saturday, February 03, 2024