Rex

Thinking how 
at the age of five 
I insisted on sitting on the 
floor of the kitchen with a 
pair of the good scissors 
pilfered from 
my mother’s sewing project 
cutting the soda can plastic 
wrapped in those mystical rings 
apart into safer pieces of dread 
that night dreaming 
of a sea of decapitated turtles
flying in the heatwave air 
thousands in formation 
only one trailing 
a veil of bloodstained plastic shreds 
not so unlike the war cloak 
of some ancient fearsome and unnamed king 
his torn mantle stained and glorious stretched behind him
even dead 
unable to fall