At the ore of the carn, the sands’ end, the joining
of two seas, two coasts, two tongues, what wind
and tide leave behind may not match that Pacific gyre
where the score is zooplankton 1 to plastics 6,
but in and around the mounds of dry and twisted
rods of kelp, I scan the shore and sing the blues:
shoe soles, shoes, tubing, straws, cigarette lighters,
cable ties, cotton buds, containers and bottles –
Nivea Shower Gel, Lucozade Sport, Yogur Liquido Natural . . .
a clothes peg, a pen cap, a nozzle, a barrel lid,
a child’s broken castle and spade, the body
of a ride-on tractor, a mould for making a crab;
a few mangled lobster pots, dozens of heavy-duty gloves,
tangles of rope with ghost net of pale monofilament,
and every shape of scrap and shard and fragment.
Larry Stapleton’s poetry has been published in recent years in journals including Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, About Place Journal, THE SHOp, Cyphers, The Stony Thursday Book and Crannóg, also in The Scaldy Detail and Science Meets Poetry 3 and is forthcoming in The North. He was one of those selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series of readings in 2014.
More work by Larry Stapleton
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