Those turtles that dive into the deep
and slowly paddle back to surface, pack
only their ancient homes upon their backs.
They are nomads resting in short term sand lots,
leaving their bags behind.
The whales have not washed
upon the shore oozing straws,
shoes, or bottle caps from their mammoth
bellies — they reign inviolate through
shimmering seas full of krill, squid, and plankton.
When it showers, we breathe with ease —
when it storms, we’re not sifting beaches
for plastic genies; we are the genie, rubbed
out of unbranded glass and compostable bottles.
We have prayed ourselves free
of our plastic-woven past which once drown
with fish and birds under mourning suns.
We accept that all things should turn to dust,
even the hardest calcium bones,
even the mountain, crumbling and eventually
breaking over millennia.
The shores erode but not under the weight of flip flops —
We carry only our reusable selves and
recycle our longing back to the sea.
—
Rebecca Surmont lives in Minnesota where she can fully enjoy the seasons and cycles of life that is often expressed in her work. She has a love of trains, corn fields, dogs, and tiny things. Her written work has been featured in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Common Ground Review, Crowstep Literary Journal, and Ekphrastic Review, among others. She is currently working on her first chapbook.
