This forest sounds like crunch of broken open

underfoot, seed pods that stink like rotting meat

when they fall to the ground. In the Guanacaste trees

howler monkeys moan like wounded dogs.

And northwest of La Casona a road so dissected,

so rutted you have to rent a jeep

to drive the fifty miles from the parking lot

through tom bush, pigeon wood and quira

before you reach the beach access. From here

a poisonous trail slithers over an empty creek bed,

Path of the Burnt Man named for the gumbo-limbo tree

whose red bark hangs shredded like dead skin,

the trunk’s musculature and nerve endings raw

and exposed. Everything in this park feels sharp

and unwelcoming, but you’ve come to see

the Green Sea Turtles, the one percent that survive

long enough to return to their birth place

after a ten year ocean sojourn, the giants

who drag their unsupported weight

onto the beach and dig holes in the sand deep enough

to hold a hundred perfectly round white eggs,

then cover them over before they leave.

No mother, no father to lead their young to safety.

Just sun, sand and birds with their sharp beaks

and the waves with their fake promises.