ALLIGATOR SNAPPING TURTLE

I spend most days underwater, swimming blind,
my carapace furred with a thick coat of algae.
I covet the murkiness of shallows and lazy rivers.

Once I was used by Man to find their drowned
the river's dead, hidden in the depths and reedy shoals.
Once they tied me to ropes, let me swim free,
until the river gave up her cargo, then they pulled me back
from my just desserts of pale flesh the color of the moon.

Every animal—living or dead—is my prey.
Sometimes I lay wait in a pond or on land,
Sometimes I lay in wait for a morsel:

a frog, a fish, a hand.
My neck is longer than the length of a man's arm,
my curved tooth or beak, strong enough
to snap off the hand that holds the rope.

My status is such that on a golf course in Cape Cod
golfers abandon their balls to me at the 18th hole.
They wake me from my slumber, 

then pay homage to my age
but they skirt my scuted keels and beak most carefully
for the golf balls remind me of my clutch of eggs
so secretly buried in the sand to winter over.

The sex of my young is determined by temperature.
But the temperature is rising 

and snapper soup is still on the menu.
Mine is a solitary existence: 

a half century in this muddy cove
and not another of my kind have I seen.

My jaw is agape, I yawn, I taste the afternoon air,
waiting for the prey to come to me. I hiss.
I wriggle my vermiform, like a red worm at the ready.
It works like a charm on the smaller creatures
but the golfers just won't bite, they call me a dinosaur.
Perhaps if I open my mouth wider, 

they will come closer.

Soon, the worms will dine on them
for my age is recorded in centuries.
My kill, another's kill, or the long dead,
it makes no difference to me, 

for, in the end, I must eat.

My armor is too tight, I overrun my boundaries,
Soon, I will be 400 pounds of carapace and shell,
my head and limbs exposed to the elements on the 19th hole.
Soon, the night will come and I will hunt again.

Walker Creek, CA