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.