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Tortoise Shout

I thought he was dumb,
I said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.

First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.

Tortoise in extremis.

Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?

A far, was-it-audible scream,
Or did it sound on the plasm direct?

Worse than the cry of the new-born,

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poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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Tortoise Shell

The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.

Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;

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poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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Tortoise Family Connections

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.

A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:
'This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg.'

He does not even trouble to answer: 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'
He wearily looks the other way,
And she even more wearily looks another way still,
Each with the utmost apathy,

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poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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Tortosise and the Hare: The true story

So you think tortoise
won the race,
not so.

Today the last
of Hare's descendants
passed on.

Oh his death
bed from his
lips came this,

my great, great
so many grandfather
was bribed,

to throw the race,
to the Tortoise
by the way of carrots,

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poem by Jim Foulk
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The Tortoise (Love Poem)

This girl came to my party,
And petted my tortoise,
In nineteen sixty four,
When I was eight, and
No-one noticed, not even me.

She still complains today
That she missed out on
Her jelly and ice-cream,
When she was seven, and
No one noticed, not even me.

I think when ten years later this
Beautiful blonde said yes, she
Would be mine, and is today, this
Tortoise slow was still around, and
No one noticed, not even me.

I tell our children now grown-up,
That I have found a tortoise is

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poem by Ian Beckett
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A Tortoise's World!

Story of a tortoise who hid in his shell
Under the rock in the well
That is where it would dwell
Until one day a frog chased by a snake, did fell

Both, tortoise and frog were friends since they met
They had so much to talk, a lot of fun, you bet
Frog wanted to go home, leave a new friend, not to forget
Frog left, promised, soon it shall return and bring friends to get

Days passed and tortoise was sad and lonely
It rained and rained, and then came the day lovely
Frog came and came Frogs, croaking and singing jolly
Also were there tortoises, fishes and snails, Joy filled the world wholly!

poem by Manjeshwari P MYSORE
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A tortoise

the tortoise is just inadequate
she has been treating
the same way everyone
of another kind

a supercilious front
to shroud weaknesses
broadcasting insouciance
with a hard hard shell

she knows she has a birthright
a hard headed advantage
with its shell signed
with letters from heaven
nobody is allowed even to knock on
it, protected species

here she is behaving in ways
that turn people away
without even knowing why

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poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Alankar(Decor) -69

Their Race Yet Not Over(Kyrielle Poem)

a narrative, it tells a story.
stanzaic, in quatrains.
syllabic, each line is 8 syllables. in iambic tetrameter.
written with a refrain in the 4th line of the quatrain.
rhyme scheme may vary. Quatrain options abaB, cbcB, dbdB

Their race yet not over with that
Else way tortoise as thought to race
To run, to swim in halves, to work-
Agreed the hare willing to race

Starting speeded with hare on land
Plodding slowed with tortoise to race
To help the river came on hand
Swam fast tortoise won first the race

Knowing not to swim the hare lost
Foolish was his challenge to race

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poem by Indira Renganathan
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An Interesting Ancestry

To some of us, a tortoise lives on land
while turtles only rarely leave the sea.
‘Chelonians' applies to any brand,
so here I'll use this terminology.

Land dwellers share aquatic ancestry
and most of us decided to stay put.
Chelonians agreed to disagree.
A flippered revolution was afoot.

A late Triassic turtle fossil shows
a hard-shelled belly plate and softer back,
presumably to ward off fatal blows
from deeper-dwelling predators' attack.

Did top shell metaphorically ‘dissolve'
when full-shelled forebear sought the sea's embrace?
Or did an unshelled forebear's shell evolve
in oceanic pilgrimage retrace?

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poem by Diane Hine
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Baby Tortoise

You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.

To take your first solitary bite

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poem by David Herbert Lawrence
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