There are those who long to make friends in foreign lands —
the foreigner the better — who strain to acquire
languages, so they can say, and understand,
such things as I am hungry, cold, tired,
or Do you like opera? Sport? I know this longing.
I want a turtle to love me. Not abjectly
like an imprinted bird, out of some fawning
reflex; I await a turtle who will sway toward me,
its weight aloft, and look me in the eye;
I expect the inner turtle, secret, barbarous,
to seek my recognition, and to try —
like a staring infant on the bus,
stirred by symmetries of mouth, nose, eyes —
to see right through my Darwinian disguise.