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| John Thieme |
Mini-epic by John Thieme
For Cruz Bonilla who made it possible
A small society of
tortoises,
A rescued family
of tortoisekind.
In the beginning
was the shell,
a pristine perfect
carapace,
or so the story
goes – such human lies.
Then one day it got cracked and mottled,
in those fallen fantasies
of Adam’s kind.
They heard of
tricksters tumbling down from heaven,
and wondered who
these tales might be about.
They heard a fable
linking them with Hare,
where slow and
steady wins the race,
but, neither slow
nor steady in their gait,
they did not
recognise this might be them.
They stood stock
still when placed beside a rabbit,
their only running
was with one another,
when they moved
faster than this crawling verse.
A ring-backed
Ulysses watched TV flickers,
these silhouettes
his world of ideal Forms.
Dormant through
the day, he came alive at prime time,
his world
determined by his owner’s soapy tastes.
Far from Troy’s
embattled walls,
near the western
reaches of that same sea,
where once his
namesake travelled for a decade,
dallying with the
sirens of the isles,
this Ulysses was shipwrecked in a box.
Then in the middle
of the journey of his life,
emancipation came,
with others of his kind,
his Ithaca a
new-found seaside home.
Illumination now
arose from other sources.
Venturing three
metres to a balcony,
he’d keep an
earnest evening vigil,
he’d gaze upon the
lustre of the moon.
Sokrates once lived a nonchalant
existence,
immune from social pride, beneath
an Afric sun
that shone upon his perfect
little pebbles,
filled in with dandelion, a bit
of clover, cedar cones.
Spring came with its cruel flowing
sap,
raising the urge for prey in an
obedient hound,
and following the hound, a
master’s human hand!
His head was chewed, he dragged
one foot behind him.
A crushed existence, ground down
from then on,
he always links the dog, the man,
the stone.
Behind him now, forever
lost,
the foreign golden sands and
turquoise sea
of what was once Saladin’s dream.
He crossed the strait where
Hercules had been before him,
survived the damaged plastron of
the fight.
He has the wisdom of his
namesake,
but cloaks this truth in
hibernating night.
He slowly settled
in his new Iberian clime,
a patriarch,
without a dynasty, without a mate.
So nut-sized,
rescued orphan Pepepillo,
an inbred bully
from a septic plastic hell,
was brought to
satisfy his spry desire.
But Pepe was no
Helen, just another mooning male!
Nurtured until now
on fish and food waste,
he turned to
eating everything in sight.
He cleaned up
wood, small specks of dirt and dustballs,
until Athena’s
guiding hand restored his health,
with spoonfed eggs
and syringed yoghurt.
Emboldened by his
newfound piglet strength,
alone, heroic,
fearless, if misguided,
Pepe resolved to
fight his own Homeric war.
Sokrates looked on
amused, sagacious,
then deigned to
grab the upstart by a leg
and threw the
pixie warrior several metres.
Pepe’s dream was
shattered in an instant.
He knew he must withdraw
from this lost fight.
With Sokrates he knew
he must be humble,
a Sancho acting
out the better part of valour,
a histrionic mimic
of the knight.
Yet martial lust can
be a fierce addiction.
He yearned to browbeat
others of his kind,
and skirmishes
became a daily drill.
Such is the lore
of small chelonian life.
The family has a
sweet and gentle member,
who seeks out
favours, while he shares his own.
Rufino was the
sole survivor of eleven,
hatched a year
before they met their doom,
when wanton hunters
in a one-time forest,
now swallowed by
the town’s insistent sprawl,
despoiled their
nest, destroyed their only home.
Adrift, abandoned
in a landlocked desert,
Rufino never fought
in Trojan battles
but suffered all
the aftermath of war.
Another foundling,
much in need of refuge,
he, too, found
safety in Athena’s care.
His playful nature
hides beneath small strips of cloth,
invisible to those he then can’t see,
but once the world
believes he’s truly vanished
he reappears, with
shiny smiling eyes
that say, ‘it’s
me. I’ve cheated you again.’
He’s ready now for
food and loving touches,
his courage and
his joy infect the house.
Now some would say it’s just
tautology,
to speak of all these varied
tortoise types:
‘A tortoise is a tortoise, have
no doubt.’
But every dappled hero tells a different
story,
a tale that can’t be spoken in
this verse.
Each champion frustrates the
snares of language
that tries to trap him in this slow
Tortoisiad.
