Challenging Poetry

Seychelles: the Aldabra giant tortoise

is there anything so sad
as a tortoise,
reaching up to grasp a leaf
between his beak,
and overturning . . .
he reaches his neck
out, trying to rock
on his shell, tries to build
momentum, but tortoise
shells are delicately balanced,
and a neck cannot
right such a heavy load.
and what should we do,
who spy him there? I wonder
who is kind enough to
turn him over again,
without laughing. without
taking a picture—and here
is me with a tortoise. we
saved him, of course.
afterward.

Author's Note ▶︎

Well, this came from a native species of tortoise found on the Seychelles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldabra_giant_tortoise
One interesting fact I found in my perusal of Wikipedia, is that these are adventuresome tortoises. They climb on their hind legs to go for low hanging branches, risking their lives because they can't reright themselves if they land on their back. So, add potential overturned tortoise to human nature, and this came.