Plastiglomerate. Tim Cresswell

the fallen trunks chunks of rusted ship-iron

      scattered fishing floats a plastic buoy

      a walker tells me of the wreck the Chilean ship

      the marker ‘round the headland for the drowned

       Plastiglomerate

      All-purpose cobalt polypropylene rope

      sluiced overboard by Tom ten days out

      with the tuna fleet missing Meg

      and local radio ground down shells

      clams and cowries orange-lipped lava flows

      the toothbrush Esme shared before she spat

      foam into the breakers bleached

      pummeled coral thin plastic forks

      from when you barbequed

      hot dogs on driftwood fire fucked

      on the foreshore shared photos of your children

      abraded black basalt green beads of olivine

      the chewed blue cap of the one-buck biro

      that leaked in the heat of my pocket

      forest fire twenty-three percent contained

      fifty-five gallon polydrum ready for rain

       Nest Site Fidelity

      Ospreys are back from

      wintering in Aruba—

      skywriting Ms and Ws

      then plummeting

      talons slicing brackish water

      rising with a prize menhaden.

      They return each March

      to the knotted nest they knit—

      wayfinding magnetic fields with

      star charts and landmarks

      Haiti Havana Florida Keys and Everglades

      Jacksonville Savannah

      then this tumbledown

      stick-and-spit summer-home

      on the platform Bill built

      here on the Chesapeake.

      Me? I’ve flown in from Wales

      where the Emperor of Japan once visited

      to spy the rare red kites

      I saw on my daily drive

      cresting the rise

      above the Irish Sea.

       Scale

      Banks collapse, beds need changing, a girl

      in a veil prepares to kill herself.

      Iceland’s for sale. Ironing piles up.

      Food festers in the freezer’s broken trays.

      Fevers swarm in vectors, thick black arrows

      thrust across the page, viruses spreading

      from who knows where. Words, misheard, fall

      pointlessly between us, on washcloths,

      recipes, pot plants. In the troposphere,

      atoms swerve, winds diverge, a lifting

      air mass gifts a polar vortex.

      We’re forecasting snow and record lows.

       Car Plant

      There’s a Morris Minor in the yard,

      Morris Green, a sunny yellow sticker

      from the seventies shouting

      NO THANK YOU to nuclear power.

      The car’s name is Bumble, or Bramble.

      Sparrows nest on the wing mirror;

      green moss grows on the window frames;

      there are holes in the floor beneath

      the mats. Flakes of rust

      stain soil ochre. Old engine oil,

      or brake fluid, spreads shadows.

      Buddleia clings to wooden trim,

      drawing a rabble of Peacocks, Admirals,

      Swallowtails. Bumble, or Bramble,

      hosts xylem and phloem sucking

      nutrients through tyres,