Memoirs of a Galápagos Tortoise

I am the remnant.

The last time I saw
the seafaring apes of old,
they were lugging
my cousins in crates
onto their oak vessels
to become living larders,
till there was just me
and no others.

The goats, the goats,
of all the creatures
to pilfer my own larder.
Servants of the seafarers,
they pillaged the green,
everything above shell height.

So I wallow in my pool
on the isle of Santa Cruz,
the last of the Pinta Island tortoises,
but not entirely alone.
They gave me two companions
with dome-shaped shells
instead of a saddle like mine.

Every egg they've collected
was a hollow curiosity.
I hid from them for decades,
now here I rest, diminishing
into a monument to something.

I'm just content
to drift into sleep.

(This poem was inspired by the story of Lonesome George, the last of the Pinta Island subspecies of the Galápagos giant tortoises. Stay tuned for more poetry coming soon.)

NaPoWriMo #4: Differences

Today's poem was inspired by a prompt from NaPoWriMo, which challenged participants to write a poem with a secret. The guidelines were that the poem should contain an idea or a subject that isn't expressed outright. This is my attempt, and I suspect that you will probably guess what it's about pretty quickly.

Differences

Sitting in the shadow of a cactus,
a man with bushy sideburns
draws sketches in a journal.

A mockingbird sits in a bush
and jumps onto the soil
to catch a beetle.

The slim, curved beak,
grey and white feathers
and large brown eyes
seem familiar yet dissimilar.

Compared with the sketches
of its relatives, the man
discovers differences so small
yet they begin a revolution.

Iguana Nostradamus

Algae going

I was basking on the rocks
on the shores of Fernandina
with half of my colony
nestled together, a scaly thicket.
Then it occurred to me.

Algae going.

The sea is warm of late,
the greenery on the rocks
battered by constant surf
is withering of late,
and I see less of the penguins.

Algae going.

I foresee thunderstorms
as heralds of the warming,
lightning, twisted and contorted,
flashes above the islands.

Algae gone.

The colony is withered,
husks of lizards litter
the petrified beaches
and the skeletal reefs.