by Judy Kaber

not with pencil on paper, but

to the scent of plastic, to the blatant

chemical marker, the same

smell dying phytoplankton leave

to tumble in the waves after they’re attacked

by hungry krill. Until you go below you don’t know

the turgid splash. In fifty years we’ve given

them hundreds of millions of tons and now

a brass weight holds our heads in,

we cry about it, we wring our hands,

make plans to ban plastic bags in supermarkets,

to revert back to paper, with its own dirty footprint.

Meanwhile birds swoop down—

albatross, petrels—beaks full

of squid, krill, slick microplastics.

They swallow without disgust, without

knowing what they owe to us. While outside

we sway, grounded like seaweed, our thoughts

shifting. A man on a bicycle rides along,

scooping up plastic returnables

for nickels. We wave at each other,

passing along wet shimmering roads,

our skin smooth, our teeth shining.

Judy Kaber’s poems have appeared in journals such as Pleiades, december, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner. She won the 2023 Maine Poetry Contest, the 2024 Maine Literary Short Works Poetry Award, and the 2024 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine (2021-2023).