To a gopher tortoise on St. Augustine Beach
Plumes of sand like smoke signals
feet from the boardwalk, and there you are,
burrowing into the evening. We read
the signs: “Conservation Area: Stay Out”
“Beware of Snakes” and wonder who actually
pays attention, wandering in or through this hammock
seeking the lost phone, missing shoe
for which they’d brave any Erebus.
We know Gopherus polyphemus
is site-faithful, doesn’t wander far,
so we breathe the salt air, marvel at your dust,
relieved to see you near, familiar,
shoveling your clean apron, half moon
as if you’d heard us bemoaning the land grab
for the oceanfront park a few miles up A1A,
the hundreds of threatened species sure to be displaced
now extant in these dunes, although like you,
the land belongs to no one, everyone,
dirt poor and filthy rich
in wild imaginings. Our transient ecologies
are all we have anymore to covet,
precious as a gopher’s clutch.
What’s within your sacred space
can stay a mystery, but if you know, you know—
and we know, we know without seeing:
the coiled cottonmouth, the Florida mouse.
And when the scales fall from our eyes,
as they did from Paul’s, we know
what we always knew in our core
we couldn’t live without.
