A Need

From the dark waters she emerges

at night heavy with eggs

  Breathing hard,

she drags her seven hundred pounds

up the beach

flippers churning the sand

inching her way uphill

*  *  *

We who witness

  her massive apparition of the deep come to land

   her dogged struggle her need

stand amidst a hatchery of stars

each blip an egg of possibility

borne of nuclear fire storms

  red dwarf   spiral nebulae

white giant   asteroid   gassy planet

or by remote chances

carbon

 water

  life

*  *  *

A wide track of darkened sand leads to the zenith of her climb

where she digs her body pit

flailing sand in all directions

to disguise the site of her nesting chamber

which she now scoops out with her back flippers

precise flippersful of wet sand lifted and placed to the side

of the meter deep chamber

  where the future of her species will incubate

*  *  *

Might this be the last beach

where this ancient turtle lays her eggs?

Will she who cannot live in captivity,

she who has survived

earthquakes and tsunamis,

meteorites and ice ages,

be extinguished by the big-brained ape

stealing her eggs

drowning her in fishing nets

turning her dark nesting beaches

into bright playgrounds

frightening her back to sea

*  *  *

There is a need to maintain dark beaches

of imagination

to harbor dark pits of potential

A need to know that somewhere in the Gulf of Papagayo

or the deep Pacific,

in the Atlantic or Indian oceans

large reptiles are swimming

  feeding   mating   migrating

A need to believe that generations hence

leatherbacks will still be grazing on jellyfish

that the largest sea turtle in the world

rife with eggs

will still be swimming toward dark beaches

*  *  *

Which of the eighty-one eggs

she has just laid in the chamber

will hatch?

Which hatchlings will escape

raccoons crabs gulls dogs humans

and skitter into the sea?

The mother covers up the answers

and, wheeling her enormous bulk

back toward the dark water,

she edges down the slope

into the intertidal zone

finally reaching wet sand

where she rests

waiting for a wave to lift her

and then pushes on deeper

afloat at last

she paddles

 disappears.

Editorial Comment. — After having picked the previous poem about leatherbacks to be included in this special leatherback focus issue, I received this wonderful poem by Donald Levering, submitted by Hal Avery. It was too good to resist, so we are adding this second poem to the poetry page. Donald was a volunteer at the Leatherback Earthwatch project in Costa Rica in January 2005 and was inspired to write this poem from his experience at Playa Grande. Donald is an accomplished and often-published poet and author, and we are especially honored to publish this poem here for the first time.