The only wild creature that ever

visited was the tortoise,

a living helmet that would be

crossing the heat-reflecting gravel again

suddenly after years of being gone,

a face that flinched in and then way in only

to slouch out again with its

china-crack mouth, and an eye

surrounded with oak-bark,

a pupil dark and without spark,

on a neck sheathed with ancient rubber.

And legs that swam, lurching strokes

stubbornly midair, tensile enough to lift

his entire chassis off the sidewalk

and lever his shadow ahead,

and strong enough to painfully claw

if we held him too close, on his way,

in the living room, on his

way turned any direction—

pointed at an offering of torn

lettuce, into that leaf, deeply even

angrily into the scattered green gift

set into the middle of the street,

a game we never

played for long because

the bronze puzzle-pieces

of his armor and his nothing-to-do-

with-us determination were already

done with our lives and he was

across the manhole cover, up the curb,

across the sun made of stone.