The Gopher Tortoise - A Poem

By Cindy Newton

In upland pines where longleaf sway,
A humble architect makes its way.
With steady claws it digs below,
a burrow deep where cool winds flow.

An engineer of earth and sand,
it shelters more than its own band.
Fox, owl, frog, and snake reside,
in caverns carved with patient pride.

Yet forests fall to roads and stone,
its ancient home is overgrown
with houses rising, parking wide—
no refuge left, no place to hide.

The state has marked it, threatened, rare,
a symbol of how much we tear
from soil that held a thousand lives,
now fractured ground where none survives.

Fragmented lands make journeys long,
to find a mate, the path is wrong.
And on the asphalt, wheels appear—
too often fate is written here.

We move them once, we shift, replace,
but long-term hope can’t find a space.
Without the forest, sun, and loam,
the tortoise cannot call it home.

So guard the pines, the sandy floor,
protect the life that came before.
For if this burrower fades from view,
the world it shelters fades there too.