As the fine orange grains of desert sands
Expand with the rising sun
Into new lands, aflame, the soils erode
To meandering dunes and smother
The withered remnants of fields in June.
But all the while and under the surface,
Barely scratched, the next great deserts
May be the wettest ones of all
Amid plastic waste, a vast expanse
Of liquid drowned by solid plastic mass.
A message in a plastic bottle, lost
For years in the stomach of Nemo.
Swept up and aloft by the wings of a gull,
And found once again by a rugged carcass
Lying next to a rotting skull.
