Saturday Poem

Upon Hearing the Glacier’s Been Declared Officially Dead

That hollering wind catches again
in my throat the way it once
caught at our tent all night it hasn’t
died down by morning blowing
open my mind’s shutters to that
interminable static snowfield ascent
with neither ropes nor poles
cold’s iron taste sunlight banging
like a gate in my sternum i grew old
expecting the crevasse-edge to crack
breakage i still carry in my pack
though years have fallen through us
and we’ve little occasion to speak
the glacier is dead news i zip
into a cool hidden pocket and keep
walking deforming and flowing
under the weight of zero gathering
a force that sucks the world we
knew through its infinite mouth

by Sara Burant
from
the Echotheo Review, 9/21