Because nature doesn’t specialize
in mercy, this House of Refuge built behind the dunes
on Gilbert’s Bar,
provisioned with fuel and blankets, cereals
and dried meat, for the survivors of ships wrecked
on off-shore reefs. And in its time
adequate to its vision.
Now with others
we parade behind the hatchery and marvel
how the new-born turtles cobble the bottom of their tank,
wander past aquariums of native fish,
tap our fingers against the glass, little codes
we want them to know us by, then tread
the boardwalk down to the beach
where survivors in another time
waded toward shore with whatever they could salvage,
mostly themselves.
No more shipwrecks
off this coast, only a few survivors of wrecked
or uncharted lives, a few tourists
looking for a place to beach. Across the dunes
the sea oats wash back and forth in a gold froth;
gulls and pelicans, sandpipers and terns,
take sanctuary in the weathered hollows of the sea wall.
Here nothing is molested, all blest.
For travelers like us, a tour of the house, a vision,
a momentary rest.
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