Forever Chemicals

Ocean waves crashing on the world’s shores emit more PFAS into the air
than the world’s industrial polluters.

— The Guardian, April 19, 2024

DuPont coats the ocean.

Stain, rain, grease-resistant PFAS

slick the tide, crash the cliffs,

catch the breeze. Lungs and leaves

vacuum the patented

miracle compounds to drift

in the vascular currents of earth 

through radish roots, umbilical cords,

the baleens of whales, the soft

aspirant skin of frogs.

Chemical chains of popcorn bags

ride the rain back to the corn and crows.

Teflon slides from the skillet to the wheat 

to its threshers and beetles.

Comfortable in my polyfluoroalkyl-

saturated raincoat, I balance 

on salt-polished boulders that rim

the churn of the bay. Waves pull and pound.

The rocks atomize ocean to a gentle mist; 

prisms shutter in the blur, gulls glide.

I breathe deeply, feel the spray and all

that it carries precipitate

into the waters of my body.