Poems by Jennie Meyer

To Infinity and Beyond*

by Jennie Meyer

From Canary Winter 2020-21

Jennie lives on Walker Creek, an estuary of tidal marsh and freshwater stream, and part of the Great Salt Marsh. Marshes are critical for absorbing storm surge and providing habitat for birds, fish and a myriad of wildlife. Jennie walks, kayaks, and skis on and through the marsh with her dog, picking up trash which the long grasses filter out of the sea.

Halfway along the beach I turn back,
my arms weighted down
with aquamarine fishing line, lures,
and cotton twine with nylon sinew
fraying out of cuts, like cyborg.

The ocean can’t afford the centuries
it takes for the glut of plastic to decompose.
Yet sea has been our limitless bounty,
bottomless,
receiving all our waste:

“What is that barge doing daddy?”
I asked as we sailed past the outer islands,
“It’s bringing the city’s trash to dump
in the middle of the sea.”
“Like the cruise ships we’ve seen?”
“Yes, but from a whole city.”

Now my son asks, perhaps in jest,
“Why can’t we blast our trash
into outer space—
It’s empty and infinite?”

“That’s just what we once thought
of the sea.”— A body
of boundless compassion,
now an ailing parent.

This, our evolution:
We loft our language of hope
from ocean to universe—
It’s wide open and still free.

*Buzz Light Year, from Toy Story