AT FIRST ENCOUNTER BEACH

Off Cape Cod
near Wellfleet Bay
on a bitterly windy cold day
with high tide seen
at First Encounter Beach
where native Americans
first met the Pilgrims
who reached out to them
offering food
as they sang their hymns
today hundreds of turtles
have lost their way
from the Gulf of Mexico
moving north to New England
over the Gulf stream
and close to a death trap
by the cold waters
have washed along the shore
as a couple of good souls
local sons and daughters
are on a mercy mission
to spare them in a triage
from frozen extinction
and dehydration
who travel to the Boston
Aquarium facility
in a miraculous airlift
in helicopters
in giant banana boxes
of emergency care
as a poet dreams this night
of young endangered creatures
not in despair on the beach
but within our hands
with difficulty to reach
the many turtles who survive
being buried in the sea
riding the blue waves
to rise among the reeds.