Ode to a Tortoise

Beautiful ancient creature
Lumbering your way through life
The people who know say you may be
descended from an even more ancient clade¹
than Dinosaurs.
Your life is long, you love your greens
And there you are, still surviving in spite of humans.
Teaching us your slow ways.

¹Clade…a group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor.