From the marvellously be-littered vaults, originally published September 18, 2020.
“such a tangle of what is wrong and what is right…”
what it was: toilet paper collected against shortages
then released into the wind as an act of anti-hoarding,
plastic bags from a big grocery store shopping sent up
to roam free to protect overloaded landfills
what it will be: an unpalatable lunch for larger and then
smaller and smaller and then larger and larger animals,
or if it’s toilet paper maybe a family gathering, a joyful
return to the site of former happy days in the woods
what it is: rubbish of course, but lit and rather lovely,
kite tails caught out of the hands of inexperienced fliers,
doves only temporarily snagged and about to take flight,
their tail feathers spread in the light as they ready for takeoff
the power of it: those lovely dark intricacies and the fans
of white light, lit and fluttering among them, the oddity:
such a tangle of what is wrong and what is right commented on
by camera and sun, their take on one moment of our destruction
♦
Judy Gaudet is a poet living in Belfast PEI. Her latest collection is Another Landscape (Island Studies Press, 2026). Others are Conversation with Crows (Oberon, 2014) and Her Teeth Are Stones (Acorn, 2005). She has edited a collection of poems, 150+ Canada’s History in Poetry (Acorn 2018).
[Editor’s Note: the new collection, Another Landscape, has one of the most beautiful covers ever.]
♦♦♦
(Judy’s) Biggest Litter Peeve?
Why do people throw empty cans and bottles out of their car windows? At home they’d put them in the garbage or recycling…
~
[Editor’s Note: hear hear! I’d love to see the backyards of litterers… are they chock a block with debris flung out the kitchen window?]
The Women’s Institute does amazing work, not the least is the annual island-wide, community roadside cleanup.
https://www.peiwi.ca/events-1/wi-annual-roadside-cleanup-2
The Litter I See Project 