Today We Clean the Beach

(Turtle Center Bali, Day Three)

The day we clean the beach
I see what humans have done,
how shameful our species has been.
I ask myself for whom
do we collect this man-made trash?
For the turtles, so they can go on,
for ourselves, to forgive our own hubris.
Why do we carefully pick up
what has been thrown without a thought
for turtles or descendants? We do it
for every member of the living earth.

And for the sea, we clean the beach
for the mother sea, she from whom
all creatures crawled.
For the sea that keeps softening me,
the sea that buoys me up
each day I walk into her arms,
the sea that gives my supple muscles
such repose, such ease.
I walk the beach and collect the trash
for the mother sea, who every day that I am here
embraces every part of me.

©Susa Silvermarie 2024