The Sea Turtles of Barra de Parismina
        Costa Rica

Volunteers for the community patrol,
two brothers carry shopping bags, grease pens,
and flashlights, walk the moonless beach, seeking
sand that’s darker, tilled up, signs of a mother

leatherback dragging herself past the surf-mark,
where the ocean nudges, tongues the shore—
sea-murmur so constant they might not hear panting,
her scooping out the pit-nest where she lays

her clutch of eggs. The older brother repeats
the novena of Our Lord, makes prayers
to Virgen del Carmen, asks for eyes to find
and ears to catch. The younger scans the tall grass

where poachers crouch, inspects the dark sand,
the dark water and sky. And then both spy
a pale-spotted carapace, drop to their knees,
and while she flippers the sand back in, they remove

what feels like fifty jellied ping-pong balls,
take this bounty of eggs to the town criadera,
bury it in the artificial nests they guard at night.
The older brother lights cigarillos, watches

for the hueveros who will come with wire-cutters
and spades unless he pinches himself awake.
The younger eats Pringles, flattens the cans.
They brood in shifts. When the hatchlings pierce

their shells with caruncle-teeth and tunnel up
through sand, the brothers deliver them to the tide,
and set down the generation they carry, drive away
the ghost crabs. Craning their necks, the tortugitos

search for bright pieces of sky, then clamber toward
the low waves that ease them from the sand.

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Copyright © 2021 William Woolfitt All rights reserved
from Spring Up Everlasting
Mercer University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission