The Third Tortoise

Tortoise One was slow but sure.

No breaks for him.

He plodded to the finish line and kept going.

Win or lose, he was who he was

and so he would be forever.

The second, too, won a race

against Achilles,

the fastest of men.

While Achilles pondered how far he was going and how he could go at all,

Tortoise Two put one foot in front of another and another and another,

caring nothing about the meaning of space or time.

Tortoise Three won no race.

An eagle picked him up, flew high,

then dropped him on a rock to shatter his shell,

to make him an easy meal.

But the rock was the bald head of an old man out for a walk.

The head cracked, but the shell did not.

Aeschylus, the tragic playwright, died in comic absurdity.

But the tortoise landed on his feet.

He was blessed and still is blessed.

No plodder he.

He had seen the world from on high,

and a great man had died that he might live.

After twenty-five hundred years,

he walks proudly,

standing on the world,

even if he can’t understand it,

and doing so at his own pace.