The Retreat

from a ten thousand year old

keep, an ice pack weeps

as steadilly its waters seep

from out the face of the retreating

glacier, creep downhill

in a slurry stream, the ice

withdrawing as if in a dream

 

as its waterfall leaps down

the mountain, plunges steep

slopes splashing into the deep,

filling the very fjord its own

ancestor had carved

 

while ocean-going craft

ply the deep slash that was

once a vast mass of migrating

snowpack, but small farms

cling precariously to its walls,

homes of the lonely fishermen

braving its wintery squalls.       .

 

first published in Time of Singing