The good thing about a tortoise
Is that he carries time on his
shoulder
and does not have to run
to cry.
He is like a river
flowing backward,
climbing  the rocks on which her mother
had bitten
to un-feel the pain of origination,
so as to cast a glimpse on her nest
in the mountain.
He is a figure, a language, a sun
whose force is sustained by his own spirit -
unrelated, unlike a star,
a candle, a night.
He is his
own version
of the light,
and the rite,
and the fight
Sisyphean.

© Lazhar Bouazzi, Carthage, TUN, July 18, 2016. Revision made on July 25, 2016.