Probiotic Season

It is the season for probiotics
to cheer up the good bacteria
and dispel the cotton-wool
in everybody’s Santa gut –
and there’s a glut of them.
Little white plastic bottles wash
up on a sea of rubbish
that ebbs and flows from year
to year, their merry tops
swallowed by marine creatures
unaware of the significance of red
or that probiotics will be their end.