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.