His name was tank.
A tortoise who always
Silently knew
What he was doing.
And he was right;
I looked it up,
One night when I
Was missing him.
The Wildlife page
Said— The male tortoise
May go years without
Encountering a female.
But when one comes near,
The males can smell her
From miles away, and will
All converge at the spot,
Battling and shell-hooking,
Shoveling and flipping one
another;
Dying upended as their lungs
collapse
Under their body organs, or else
Finally entering her: to grunt
That wordless song “your body
Calls my body to move this way”
As each would have practiced
On wet rocks. And the female
Is thinking quietly, we imagine,
This is not so pleasant as the
first
Fifteen times today.
*
I bought Tank in a store,
Where they kept males
Together, lit calm blue
And separated by thirty-six
Inches (not miles) from
females, lit pale-red. Constantly,
The males tried to break free,
And every so often
Bashed a hole and ran wild—
Never for the daylight, just
For the pale-red light
“Your body calls my body...”
*
When I brought him home,
For the first few weeks,
I found him masturbating
Along his water bowl.
But then he set in to his
Desert mode. And just ate
Melon rinds, moved dirt,
And traded shade with sun
Like an expert thermostat.
When he could see the hills,
He would break out, so we
Upgraded to wood fencing.
*
And then he seemed accepting
Of the bounded obstacle course
And hut and water bowl. Years
Of seemed. Then, one
Watermelon season, I came
With a gift-bucket of rinds
And found a bashed,
Splintered hole.
Did he see a hill,
Or smell her in the wind?
I won't guess;
I'll never know.
* * *
I went back into
My box, listened to
Dance music, read
A romance,
Dreamt of rioters
Bashing on a
Pet shop latch:
Insane and beautiful.
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