Swimming, swimming

 We found a young turtle trying to cross the road.
Tiny little thing,
hunter green marbled fantastically into mustard yellow
with angry orange flecks about it. We picked him up
and gave him a name, a backstory, like a little moving doll.
We took what we thought was good care of him—
reading up on diet and habitat,
testing vegetables and meats to see what he liked,
digging up worms (half because he voraciously devoured them,
half because we liked to watch them thrash as he fought them),
setting him in a pretty tank with pebbles sloping into water.

To us, it was a back-and-forth:
we invented his appreciation,
mistook his appetite for satisfaction,
viewed his helplessness as affection.
We marveled at the fairytale life we had given him.

To him, it must have been something more sinister,
inscrutable gods that giveth and taketh away,
parceling out kindnesses with a clumsy largesse
then disappearing with no indication of coming back or ever having existed.
All he could do was bide his time and make feeble attempts at escape.

We would occasionally take him outside in a large plastic bin
and set him in the grass to be with nature.
We figured it’d do him good.
He would immediately swim to the deep end of the bin
and rush headlong at the plastic, swimming, swimming,
trying to get through the invisible barrier
to the tall green grass beyond.
We’d leave him awhile then bring him back inside.