‘Dawn of a New Age’ by Sue Norton – Resurgence Prize, Highly Commended

Of ten green bottles, two are glass
and make music, ringing
the bell of the bottle bank.
Eight are plastic: two are scrunched,
recycled by the council; one floats
in the canal, one rolls in a ditch
tossed from a car; one embarks on a sea voyage.
Three truck to landfill.

It’s a new beginning, the Anthropocene:
a non-degradable marker
in rock strata, whose seams will show
when nuclear testing started, and how
we filled our lives with plastic coffee cups;
and rubbish mounds, like cairns, outlasted us.