Wading

22. 16 June 2021

This is the weird plastic-bag-with-algae-in-it stuff.

I’m wading through the soft flat sea

On my local beach

With bright green fur on the rocks

And bladderwrack.

The tide’s on its way in;

The water’s cool not cold.

It would be nice to swim — but I don’t have a partner

And I’m too cowardly.

There are a few bits of beach showing

Pebbles and sand.

As I wade I see white scraps of plastic bag

Washing to and fro in tiny waves

Like a ghostly kind of seaweed.

Muttering, I pick them up, a handful of

Slimy wet plastic,

Tidy up the sandbags that have fallen

From a hole in the battered steps.

I know that me picking up plastic

Won’t make even a nano-sized dent

In the vast tides of trash swilling around the oceans.

Endless tons of it.

Some of the scraps of plastic bag

Have gone bright green.

I’ve seen this before.

I thought it was algae on the surface

But the green doesn’t rub off.

As if the algae have somehow burrowed

Into the plastic itself and are making a home there.

This gives me hope

That somewhere in the oceans

Is a bug that eats crude oil

And one of its buglets

Will eat plastic.

I’m still trying to find somebody who’s investigated this weird plastic-bag-and-algae stuff. It might be important. Anybody out there?