James, I like this, especially your reference to Ephesus.  I can imagine that
in the far future our coke bottles will seem like strange fertility symbols
to future generations.
The lack of punctuation did bother me as it made this seem like one big
run-on sentence, leaving the reader breathless by the end.  There are a few lines
that I believe could be cut without damage to the poem.  But all in all this is
interesting poem.  Those shopping carts are very vivid.  Sue




I've never seen the river water so low
with the opposite bank
in simple paddling  distance
and      (cut  here?)
low and enough to show
a total of ten supermarket trolleys
under different layers of silt -
maybe of interest to future archeologists
a millennium hence (cut here)
when we become much the same
as Ephesus is now, (period?)
though further down the water  (cut though?)
is deeper at the quay where
boats could  still make landings
though the Canada geese flock
is relaxed in the water
with a prescience of anything larger (with no prescience?)
about to come along and scare them
onto the wide hot screed
of hot sand that is mostly
what the estuary consists today -
with nothing to come and
nothing to go away.