Category Archives: Poems

The loyal tortoise ambles

Through a forest full of brambles

Where once a meadow full of flowers flourished,

Where once the stamens danced

And petals bright entranced

Now a harsher foliage is nourished.

The tortoise tries a bite

Of whatever plant’s in sight

Its mouth enduring savagery and pain

For the aged tortoise knows

That they who seek a rose

Will, in the process, find that thorns they gain.

The tortoise eats its pick

Though much may make it sick

In hopes of finding what it thinks is lost.

The tortoise chews and bleeds

Just to satisfy its needs,

To find its rose regardless of the cost.

Somewhere amid the brush,

In a pocket, dark and hushed,

A seed emerges from the salty soil.

Its leaves taste stale air,

But the seed does not despair

For beauty never grows bereft of toil.

Someday the rose will bloom

And emerge amidst the gloom.

Perhaps the tortoise finds it after all.

Fearless are the plants of old,

Or so another tortoise told

In tales to seeds and to the ones who crawl.