Laura Sobbott Ross

Red Tide

Cocoa Beach, Florida

It will take a month to bury the fish.
Prison work crews shovel the shoreline,
pause in orange long enough to consider
the impunity of blue, its restless edge.

Algae weeps the wicked lava
beneath the tide, casts out fish like stones.
Sea breezes buzz in empty eye sockets,
fins crinkle like wax paper beneath black flies.

Canadian tourists downwind
will endure anything for sun.

Even dolphins and sea turtles
are not immune to the neurotoxins,
insoluble as salt in the sea.

During nesting season
when the flippers of turtle hatchlings
are still pebbled with eggshell,
a journey begins—
a vast easing forward, hiss and tumble;
shells no bigger than the circumference
of each shovel handle with a prisoner’s fist
around it. Every incandescent light
dimmed on shore, should a streetlamp
be mistaken for a star,
or a hook of neon for the moon.

 

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