The most original offering made to Unshod Quills for this issue comes from a team working at a turtle cognition library in Hillsboro, Oregon. The poems that follow were written for the theme of mirrors. Each are written from the perspective of the turtles the writers study. The photo is of two of the turtle subjects.
Quake Climbs Away - photo by Rosemary Lombard on the theme When We Two Parted
PEACE
Sphere where the Ring swayed for its mastery
of the rest of Middle Earth,
Learn love.
Dear Bilbo regretted their wars,
teaching it’s book that sings,
Mirror of the way sight understands friend.
Few would work for that, that sway to peace.
Be remembering I turtle am peaceful.
—Spin Lombard
MIRROR TALK
The mirror I move by faces me with me.
Face to glass face.
Mouth to that glass mouth.
Scale to glass scale.
I decide who I am,
present my mirror self,
performing my truth game
by me.
—Scuter Tornieri
POEM WALKING
Poem alone walks away by being not read.
Mirrored by readers’ dreams,
the poem lives.
—Dittow Tornieri
Authors Biographies
Dittow and Scuter Tornieri, sisters, and Spin and Rosemary Lombard work at the Chelonian Connection turtle cognition laboratory in Hillsboro, Oregon. They like to write in the voice of a turtle crying into the wilderness of the human world. Dittow also enjoys creating line drawings. Scuter’s poem “Mirror Talk” reflects the work of the lab in mirror self-recognition. Spin’s poetry appears in Thresholds Literary Journal and Four and Twenty. You can learn more about Chelonian Connection here.