Caroline Turner

Caroline Turner

Work from Hinterland.

We, the prepared
pay our dues to time, once,
twice, forever.

Folding and unfolding,
time remembers
what we shall prepare for
in the future
and what we have failed to prepare for
in the past.

Nature, drunk on instinct,
grounded in its own tangibility,
does what it pleases.

Earth shifts and adapts,
patient and assured as
it calibrates to the chaotic
pulses of nature.

We challenge it.
Count the number of times
the sun
rises and falls, rises and falls.

Prepare for hunger, prepare for pause.
Prepare for discomfort, prepare for isolation.

Harmony revolts,
even as
we propel our wishes into the presumed
space of tomorrow.

They scatter
on the surface of a drifting stream,
unorganized, patternless, lying heavy and flat,
until at last,
they fold into each other,
collapse into themselves,
and thrust forward
to to be eaten by the water
below.

Text in collaboration with Katrina Eresman