Our Lady of Flotsam

O she who keeps watch
over the rubbished, the odd shoe, the cracked
crockery flung in rage, the zipper pull,
chunks of airborne, waveborne styrofoam.
Vigilant mother-of-pearl, of cockle & scallop.
All ruin, all glorious sand-glinted treasure
is welcomed into her oh-holy-arms.

Tides strew a briny indulgence
at her feet. She makes incarnate the shred,
the bit, the fragment. Grants goodness
to the twist-top, the peach pit, the tangled line.
Gull-beaks beseech her name, crab-hulls
praise the stones which tumble upon her strand:
an ocean of miscellanea become sacred.