Oh, sister, like me you are ordained—
a female forced to carry a house
on her back.
You emerge from the sea at high tide
sure of what must be done.

Under a fingernail moon
you crawl above the high tide line,
digging holes here and there,
an act of guile.
Predators wait.
Make no mistake where you lay
your clutch of eggs.

Your front flippers dig a pit.
Your hind flippers carve out a cavity
to accommodate your body.
When you open up like a pocketbook,
leathery eggs slip out.
These are your younglings.
Like it or not, you will leave them.

I hear the same ancient song—
the one that sings you to the shore.
I crawl from under my patchwork quilt
to light a lamp.

When my children were small,
I tried to protect them from harm.
I warned: don’t fight, don’t play in the street,
don’t talk to strangers.
Of course, they fought, played in the street,
talked to strangers.

They stumbled, blundered, erred,
entangled themselves
in mind-boggling snares, yet
with good fortune, survived.

After long hours of labor,
you cover your nest.
Lumber across the beach,
re-enter the sea, swim homeward
and never look back.

Your younglings struggled
over hills of sand,
to be killed by predators,
or fall helpless on their backs,
to burn in the sun
like innocents consumed by hell-fire.

Some made it to shore,
caught the tide at the right time,
made it into the sea.