Creation Myth
I began:
a shudder in the dark,
a morning chorus of
thick-headed regret;
sickness, tossed on the
waters between Southampton
Docks and the Red Sea.
She carried me, my mother,
as far as the cactus-covered
hills, pushed me into
drawing breath.
When the sky became
the colour of a bruise,
my father took me,
pricked my infant heel
with cactus thorn.
The blood dripped onto
the red earth and he
made a clay of it, daubed
its colour on my cheeks,
queened me with it,
then tethered me in place.
We Have Made A New World
“Plastic is a fourth kingdom, whose boundaries are unlimited.”
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There is a plastic bag at the bottom
of the Mariana Trench.
Think of it as a monument
to the laws of unintended
consequences;
call it exhibit A.
A trillion micro-fragments
line the ice of the Arctic Sea;
call them exhibit B.
In the guts of albatrosses,
exhibit C;
Mountains of PVC, PET, PS,
PP, PE enough to challenge
Everest: exhibit D.
Our fourth kingdom,
more than animal, greater than
mineral, less nourishing than
vegetable,
its boundaries unlimited.
Flight of the dragonfly 