they mistake it for food
and feed it to their young
who fly from their nests
to forage vainly in the sea
their stomachs still filled
with it and so clogged up
there’s no room left at all
to digest their natural prey
hunted from time immemorial.
For such obtuse creatures
their fate is sealed as
they cannot adapt to it
since it arrived so fast
they cannot even mutate
and stubbornly persist to
perish in thousands there
on the lonely Pacific island
in the middle of nowhere.
How many of us are aware
when we discard our plastic
and think it merely trash
that it will float intact around
our seas for countless centuries
to choke the very life out of
such silly creatures as these?