Poem for Friday and Preparing to Move

Move
By Alicia Ostriker

Whether it’s a turtle who drags herself
Slowly to the sandlot, where she digs
The sandy nest she was born to dig

And lay leathery eggs in, or whether it’s salmon
Rocketing upstream
Toward pools that call, Bring your eggs here

And nowhere else in the world, whether it is turtle-green
Ugliness and awkwardness, or the seething
Grace and gild of silky salmon, we

Are envious, our wishes speak out right here,
Thirsty for a destiny like theirs,
An absolute right choice

To end all choices. Is it memory,
We ask, is it a smell
They remember,

Or just what is it—some kind of blueprint
That makes them move, hot grain by grain,
Cold cascade above icy cascade,

Slipping through
Water’s fingers
A hundred miles

Inland from the easy, shiny sea?
And we also—in the company
Of our tribe

Or perhaps alone, like the turtle
On her wrinkled feet with the tapping nails—
We also are going to travel, we say let’s be

Oblivious to all, save
That we travel, and we say
When we reach the place we’ll know

We are in the right spot, somehow, like a breath
Entering a singer’s chest, that shapes itself
For the song that is to follow.

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We spent nearly all of Thursday running around doing the final things we needed to do in Maryland, starting with putting in orders for things we need to pick up as soon as we get to Seattle, then going to the MVA to return our EZPass transponders, followed by a trip to PetSmart in Kentlands, which said online that they had Feliway in stock but that turned out not to be true. From there we went to meet Paul's boss, who took us out for a fabulous lunch at Asia Nine in Gaithersburg. After lunch, we went to the nearby Doubletree Hotel's Hertz counter to pick up a rental car. 

Then we took our Corolla to Carmax to sell, which ended up taking more than an hour. We had to rush to the bank to deposit the check before they closed and over to Petco to get the Feliway that PetSmart didn't have. We stopped back at the Airbnb to feed the cats and throw in a laundry before going to my parents' for dinner from the Cheesecake Factory. Now we're back at the Airbnb, sneaking anti-anxiety meds into the cats' food, finishing one last laundry, packing the things we don't need to keep out for Friday morning, and catching up on The Masked Singer after my usual Thursday Zoom chat!