Really? Flick cigarette butts
onto the grassy bluff above today’s
sapphire smooth ocean?
Down the path the sticky slime from
a crumpled soda can still spills onto
the scarlet petals of a flowering hibiscus
The plastic grocery bag caught on a tree limb
above a man on his back under a tree
clutters his view of rising cumulous clouds
through a kaleidoscope of leaves
Another man lets his dog leave a gnarly mess
in the center of a boardwalk to the ocean
where he might as well have deposited
his own mortal mounds for someone else
to pick up and toss aside
Be careful, I think –
there are landfills called cemeteries
filled with human remains
foraged and scattered
by prowling beasts, ashes
returned to oceans, urns
emptied for the wind to stir
And then there is trash, and how humanity
insults the beauty of the earth