Part 1: Now Quite the Turtle Tale

"Once ... up ... on ... a ... time,"

Old Plumbrook Turtle started fitfully,

with considerable strain and at unhurried pace,

quite after which she paused

to shift her bulk of portly weight

from right side creaking quite to leftward.

With ponderously quite calculated thought,

with care she contemplated

her next words, so thereby choosing

midst the many possible open to her.

By her chosen movement, she settled then her bent

and domish body for to rest quite slablike on the even larger,

sandy-beige quite crooked rock

that jutted over water from midslope aslant

above the flatland's muddy creek's so quite

confining border.

Deep fluid, bold-browned, in color very like quite

syruped cream of softly rippling chocolate,

muddled past beneath on its sedate meander

eastward with a mind quite obviously

fixed well on traveling somewhere else.

And so proceeding slowly.

Quite.

She looked at me quite languidly,

blinking in the streaming sunlight, as if to say,

"And what, I ask, might you be doing here?"

But---but!---of course she knew,

I knew, quite then (and even now) already.

(to be continued in Part 2)