I arrive at the lake gazebo this morning
and there are two older women 
leaning over the northern edge
looking down into the clear water.
I immediately think of turtles.

We say our good mornings, but it 
seems like they’ve been
looking at other things.

As they head off up the ramp
one of them says, ‘no turtles’.
But something inside me says,
‘today there’s one here’.

I look all around in the lit up areas,
where the water is clear under a still surface,
strands of grass growing up,
a log or a rock here or there
on the brown bottom,
half a meter or more below
the top of the water.

(The gauge at the other end of the lake 
says 1.9 metres today.)

I still can’t see one.
I shift to the darker areas
in the shade of the gazebo’s roof.
The women are about to leave.

I take off my glasses, and there,
among the dark shadows,
is the dark form of a turtle
heading south.

‘Turtle,’ I call out to the women.
They come over.
‘You won’t believe me. He’s hard to see.
There, in the shadows.’

I’m right—he is hard to see, and they
don’t believe me.
We talk a while about turtle numbers,
quendas and crows.

And all the while he’s heading slowly south. 
I follow him in the shadow
and point him out again
as he shows whiter side flesh
under the shell.
‘Oh yes, I see the white strip—it’s moving,’
one says.

We follow him a little more.
He comes out into the full light.
I point him out with the shadow 
of my finger. ‘I don’t have either of 
your eyes,’ the other woman says.
‘He’s heading for the shadow of your neck,’ 
says her friend.
‘Oh!’.

Eventually we all slowly move off,
the women continuing their walk
as I return to the northern side of the gazebo,
just as guide dogs and their trainers arrive.

‘Find yourself a seat,’ the first person says to his dog.
I imagine the dog sitting on the little bench, but she
just sits on the floor.

I move off back up the ramp.
But suddenly I’m stuck by this little troop of dogs,
having been just yesterday
on top of one of the seven hills around
North Fremantle / Mosman Park, Mooro Country—
one of the seven dingo brothers, as the signs say.
I count the dogs.
Seven.