The Hurtoise

a fictional misprint in National Geographic

         Here, below,
pot-holes in the street are filled by tortoise feet
and any shadow cast is hidden by the bulbous
undercarriage of his belly. He’s never touched
a beer, poor thing. His back is slightly cracked
by the curiosity of children that took sticks
to his carapace like ham-fisted monsters
on palm Sunday. He moves slow so his eye is fast.

         A friend
is hard to acquire—the spirit is weak
since the hare was hard on him. Victory is
a small cup when you only have a shell
to share it with, and that whole escapade
was handled like a hot potato by the press.
Since then, avoiding sports days like the plague,
his social structure has fallen through like an egg.

         But old Harriet
did well for herself, he laments. She traveled
the globe on a rumour, inspired man’s love
that went to her head like the rod of god or some
sort of lightning shock, and how she led
and led the sermon well. When he went to visit
she babbled like a hell-hound on the matter
of charity; and now he carries his grief in a knap-sack.

         A lover
is practically out of the question—he is oldish,
an octogenarian and full of moaning. Because
he’s too preachy, females often leave him
for members of the hell’s turtles clan,
and he might see her zip past peripherally,
clutching leather and ghosted by exhaust fumes.
What could he do but slow down his racing heart?

         Each night a choice
is made between earth and water, and each time
he wishes for the other. The grass is always
greener than the sea-weed, or vice versa.
He cries himself to sleep, his eyes full of salt,
the salt of walking the earth or plunging
the depths. He starts to dream of the world
banqueting beneath a perfect touch of sun and splash;

         deep in sleep
he clutches at an image of clown fish
and mini-man’o’war clams, his teeth softly grinding,
his face slightly gurning inwards. And he wakes
in the middle of one—a jerk—a gnash—
a mouthful of stale air. When the night is too much,
when the insomnia is too forceful, he opens
a book on Houdini and nibbles its spine a little.

         Look at him now—
how the wind pumps through him as though
he were a pan-pipe fluted by water-skimming airs!
There are songs that only he has heard, tunes that
eighty years on might keep sounding for another hundred.
Feel his rough thumb of toil and travel; how his feet
have mapped all roads and ports in and out of here;
how, lying flat, he heaps himself upon himself.