Wading

22. 16 June 2021

This is the weird plastic-bag-with-algae-in-it stuff.

I’m wading through the soft flat sea

On my local beach

With bright green fur on the rocks

And bladderwrack.

The tide’s on its way in;

The water’s cool not cold.

It would be nice to swim — but I don’t have a partner

And I’m too cowardly.

There are a few bits of beach showing

Pebbles and sand.

*

As I wade I see white scraps of plastic bag

Washing to and fro in tiny waves

Like a ghostly kind of seaweed.

Muttering, I pick them up, a handful of

Slimy wet plastic,

Tidy up the sandbags that have fallen

From a hole in the battered steps.

*

I know that me picking up plastic

Won’t make even a nano-sized dent

In the vast tides of trash swilling around the oceans.

Endless tons of it.

*

Some of the scraps of plastic bag

Have gone bright green.