The Tortoise from Nogales

When Oscar from Nogales,
that tortoise under marigold,
sees early morning strike the wall
he reads the name upon his shell
and blogs the nations.

blogs the time.

Heads stuck out

male and female prowl,

foreleg lifted in thought.

But of these languages now deceased,

subsumed to one diverse,
two or four still crawl

and sleep out summer well.
To free them will protect

if you have the good sense

to get a book of Tortoise Blogs.

3.

Four baby desert tortoise came out yesterday,

two the next in the humidity.

As clouds came in and out,

the black chow acted strange,

threw one up and down.

Two on the grass,

one beside the wall,

later, when the mother came out,

one was by her foot.

They are hard to see,

half dollar, brown and green

glistening in mud

they hatch serially,

two or three, four a day from the 10th.

I put them in a box atop the wash.

One climbed the back of another and jumped out,

jumped off the washer, headed out the door.

His mother followed me around the yard,

wanted ruella flowers for the one she adored.

The father was restless, burrowed deep

beneath the concrete slab to blog.

4.

Tortoises, dolls desire talk,

for language, expression and the thought,

sound and meaning inside things

with passion, but not ordinare,

the lyrical reaching hawk scream, suddenness of wings,

layerings that caw over a base of wind,

smell of dust with shafts of sun,

cry in a moment, each moment timed.

What does it matter if I knew a moment,

a life in a moment, ten lives a moment,

three hundred years eternal,

allowing sense and breathing with the rest?

Anything that does that or recalls

having done is worthwhile breathing

the same breath as all.

5.

That is what breath means

when the hippophant recovers,

calls the time of being,

the Hippophant like none other,

nor any unique thing.

The rime in search of talk,

meaning and sound of breath

Everything that seeks song,

unconfined to all,

for water breathers breathe their gills

breathe life, breathe song and sing.

They sing. They sing.

Everything that has breath.

Everything that has breath.

Everything that has breath.