One morning on a pale golden sunrise beach
my son and I came to a tiny tidal pool
full of small mollusks,
a seething wet morass of color
bubbling with their thousand tiny breaths.

The water was draining into the sand
and I thought surely it would be gone before the sea reached them again
so we ran with seething handfuls,
relinquishing the tiny creatures to the sucking tide,
wishing them a better life.

But as we did it 
I wondered if it was the right thing.
After all,
who was I to think
I knew better than the ocean?