breaks from the blue-black


skin of the water, dragging her shell


with its mossy scutes


across the shallows and through the rushes


and over the mudflats, to the uprise,


to the yellow sand,


to dig with her ungainly feet


a nest, and hunker there spewing


her white eggs down


into the darkness, and you think




of her patience, her fortitude,


her determination to complete


what she was born to do----


and then you realize a greater thing----


she doesn’t consider


what she was born to do.


She’s only filled


with an old blind wish.


It isn’t even hers but came to her


in the rain or the soft wind


which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.




She can’t see


herself apart from the rest of the world