apple juice box. Summer will fade the dyes
on the plump blush and golden circle. And (eventually)
the single-use plastic straw will glaze and crack
back into long-chain polymers and molecular dust.

Down these alleys – past memorial stones,
personal gyms and mulch heaps – to the sea,
with remains of Larsen C stuck fast on the shoals
slowly sinking and the humpbacks singing.

The dunes they mined for years – Some even
went to make Waikiki that perfect dream beach.
Who remembers when the road was lost and sand for days?
And kids down the face of Primbee dune on a tin lid laughing?

I heard they found stuff in the sand, bones, burials from another time.
Now there’s only coalwash and lantana. Coalwash and the vacancy,
like a tooth gone from a smile. From here people saw
Cook pass on his way to landfall. Now you’re here.

Gulls hang above, and before you an ocean
of time, then gone like a wrapper snatched by the wind.

Ten poems in ten weeks – this is week 1
Image: from the alley across from my house (yes, it’s still there…)