Tuesday poem: Forty-league boots
June 6, 2017
Forty-league boots
We cross the Pacific
leaping between plastic islands.
Great ballooning whales
squeak beneath our soles,
harpooned by our heels.
We are the waste-walkers —
everyone her own Jesus.
PS Cottier
So we’re contributing to the flooding of small Pacific nations, while creating huge floating islands of trash. Gives a whole new meaning to the word recycling. ‘We’, in this context, refers to all the industrial economies that refuse to take global warming seriously.
And I know Jesus walked on water, not convenient piles of trash, but it seemed to make a kind of sense.
PS Cottier 
I love this poem, Penelope. The ‘waste walkers’ is a striking image!
Thanks, Michele.
I just read an article about how the deepest trenches in the ocean are also full of garbage, so we’re certainly consistent!
I agree – short, striking and effective!
That is what I strive to be, Tim, although not so short.
[…] I had in mind, but a very nice illustration. I think I should lay off the plastic, as this is the second poem in the last few months dealing with that material, but there’s just a lot of it […]