SEA TURTLE AUTOPSY Floating up against the bars that keep sea creatures from the circulator, a Kemp’s ridley, from what we could tell at the distance, flippers in position as if navigating the Bay. An autopsy would be required to hypothesize the cause, laying the body out, cutting through the bridge connecting the carapace to the plastron, lifting it from pectoral and pelvic girdles to assess the lungs, three-chambered heart in its pericardium, digestive and reproductive organs, the cloaca, which kisses another’s to mate. Maintenance was not authorized to remove the grate. We did not succeed in scooping with a stretcher on a rope. The species rare, endangered, it would have to be reported, the state decide what needed to be done. What is an animal? What is death? Who is a turtle? Who are we? If we were capable, what would we say? How would we introduce? Would we understand? The being swimming away from us on a parallel sea. REMEMBERING Part of us streams with the overflow, over the top, into the whirlpool’s churn, & away downstream. Part sinks, Collecting with tannins & sediment upstream. Whoosh & shush of pines, plank bridge across the feeder stream, trail to rocks on the side of the dam. In wet years, climb down to feel the spray. In dry, cross the spillway below the mossy top. POETRY BY ALISON HICKS
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