Sea Turtle Ii Poem by Morgan Michaels

Bringing my bird-like beak to bear
Not sharp, mind you, but incisive,
On rubbery crustacea, caught,
To their embarrassment,
In open waters, so to speak,
Between divots of sea-moss,
Between fronds of sea ferns.
A lumber on land, whence I come, and need return
To breed, true.
yet shockingly agile underwater,
The sea, the sun-glanced tide my element.
The water loves the shoosh of my bumpers. It answers.
Overhead pass the shadowy albatross,
like boomerangs, that never come back,
Also in their element.
Secret: ninety percent of flying is falling.
They make it look easy. I admire them
As, hopefully, they do me,
My mastery of the waves-
Strange it is floating, eyes-closed,
When the shadows catch you-
But back to me. It's all about me for once,
Me, me, no one but me.
There were kayakers, one day,
With guns across their gunwales.
I smelled the trouble- shot
At once, the slug ticked off my shell-
Twice, it rang kerplunk!
Into the...