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Sunday, July 31, 2022

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH

a mirror poem
by Elise Kazanjian




What were we all thinking?
An abandoned fishing boat  toothbrushes
six tons of gill nets   toys   lawn chairs   plastic
containers   a three and a half ton  mysterious object twenty
feet wide six feet high   shoes    millions miniscule plastic waste bits    trawling
booms   plastic rods  tires   huge foam buoys  stewing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three 
times the size of France  growing every day    in 2009 the non-profit Ocean Voyages
Institute’s 132-foot sailing cargo ship begins removing plastics from the ocean    
many of us move mouths    jaw about oceans     threatened oceans that give
life to all creatures    oceans once polluted can not be salvaged   
What were we all thinking?
 
What are we all thinking?
The oceans once polluted can not be salvaged      so many creatures
humans    given life    many of   us move mouths        jaw about oceans     threatened    
in 2009 the  non-profit Ocean Voyages Institute’s132-foot sailing cargo ship
begins removing plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch three times
the size of France   growing every day   millions miniscule plastic waste bits     trawling
booms   plastic rods    tires   marine debris  stewing with lawn chairs    
plastic containers   a three and a half ton mysterious object twenty
feet wide six feet high    shoes   toothbrushes    six tons
of gill nets    toys   an abandoned fishing boat  
What were we all thinking?


Elise Kazanjian’s poems have appeared in Fog & Light: San Francisco Seen Through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here 2021; the Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2022, and others. She was Foreign Editor, CCTV, Beijing; has been a San Francisco pawnbroker; and is Co-Judge, Prose Poem, Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition.