Neither Fully Land or Fully Sea

Shell-inlaid shrines
Rich wetlands gone
polluted, paved
Sneakers and iPhones walk
surreal and dangerous
Wave buffeted plastic
eat the beach
Picture a shuttered ecosystem
A catalog of loss
Shells growing scarcer
the sacred buried
the beloved plumbed

*

This poem is an erasure poem but my printer is acting up so I’m unable to post the actual pages. The source is an online article in Hakai Magazine titled “The Symbolic Seashell” by Krista Langlois, pages 11-13. The title also comes from the text. I highly recommend reading it for a fascinating look at the social history and significance of seashells.

Prompt via The Wombwell Rainbow

Art by John Law