A Poem a Day (140): Fifty million plastic beads

Today I read a news story about artist Rob Arnold sifting plastic from forty bags of litter from his local beach in Cornwall. The items included fifty million plastic beads. He makes artwork to raise awareness of environmental issues. This poem is about that.

Fifty million plastic beads

Fifty million plastic beads

Crawling in the soft sands.

They hitched a lift

On the backs of waves

And travelled. How far,

I do not know.

Fifty million plastic beads

Could make necklaces

For a million faces

To wear as a bitter

Reminder that our seas

Are suffocating.

Fifty million plastic beads.

This junk of man swimming

Under a clear azure sky

Is just the tip of the trash

Heap. Our lives, failing

To disintegrate.

Fifty million plastic beads

Are merely a drip-drop

In the ocean compared with

What’s already out there,

Just visiting. Our legacy

To the sea.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 10, 2020