Michael H. Lester

Easy Come, Easy Go

I was a young boy enjoying a family vacation at a cottage by a lake. One morning, walking along the beach with my mother, I found a large, pockmarked fossil—a rock shaped like a turtle with a little bump for the head. Mother said I could keep it, and I brought it home with me. I told her I would use it as a paperweight when I grew up and kept the rock throughout my young adulthood.
 
I joined the Air Force to avoid the draft in October 1965 and left the rock at my father’s house, where I lived after my parents’ divorce. When I finished my tour of duty in late December 1969, the war in Vietnam still raging, I returned briefly to my father’s house where I discovered his new wife had thrown away my turtle rock and so much more.

what the tide washes up
or the winds reveal
will one day 
be swept away
along with every witness

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About the Author

Michael H. Lester’s work has been widely published, been translated into several languages, and won numerous awards worldwide. His recent publications include two illustrated children’s books, Cassandra and the Strange Tale of the Blue-Footed Boobies and Johnny and Frankie’s Summer Sleepover; a book of poetry, Notes from a Commode: Volume I; and a picture book entitled The Squeeping Catterwhip.

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