Whale

Rusted, beached
Corruscated, tipped
Spilled, eventre (gutted)
Wet pebble-rattled
Receding tides do not alter
In any beautiful way
This monument to our greed.

Ropes, cannisters and bobbins
Plastic blue plastic
Canary yellow
This in no way seems probable
From the distant arrangements of shelves
To this poor rubble of beached bathers.

And heaviest of all
The stinking rotting hill
Of flesh
Stuffed like Christmas
With landfill
Our Landfill.

The whale
From what gyratory mixture
Did this Mother and
World-Seer sip
Maybe this is her sacrifice
But this is our vanity
In her, or shame.

Twisted, broken, bloated
Between the landfill shame
And sea of tide
Wet rattles the pebbles
Skerries of the hoard of words
That lie like engorged
And drowned Odysseus
World recorder
Witness...Chronicler
Chronicle..Chronicler
What have we done.