"An Interruption" by Robert S. Foote

A boy had stopped his car

To save a turtle in the road;

I was not far

Behind, and slowed,

And stopped to watch as he began

To shoo it off into the undergrowth--

This wild reminder of an ancient past,

Lumbering to some Late Triassic bog,

Till it was just a rustle in the grass,

Till it was gone.

I hope I told him with a look

As I passed by,

How I was glad he'd stopped me there,

And what I felt for both

Of them, something I took

To be a kind of love,

And of a troubled thought

I had, for man,

Of how we ought

To let life go on where

And when it can.

"An Interruption" by  Robert S. Foote. © Robert S. Foote.