Pacific Trash Vortex

The blackened wooden Buddha on my desk
is missing fingers on a chipped left hand
that cups the air, pacific face in dusk
gazing at zero as if to understand
how liquid time might freeze in his robe’s form,
like folded icicles. But, no. The world
deliquesces and flows like sewage whirled
through pipes and frothing sewers and out storm
drains, gathering in the North Pacific Gyre
––plastic bags like jellyfish, ghost nets,
the small white finger bones of cigarettes,
and polymers and sludge and other mire
that is our legacy of floating loss,
nibbled by pelicans and albatross.