We 
Feel
Time
                      s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g                 out;
 a crevasse 
          between / us
                         m-o-v-i-n-g
                                               like a
                                                         glacier                           
collapse compilation 
on YouTube,
streaming … in searing slow motion …

Ice calves
                   away, 
                              from itself, 
                                              m
                                                 e
                                                     l
                                                       t
                                                          i 
                                                            n
                                                               g
                                                                    a-part
in great cascading curtains \\\
as if carved 
by the brutal centuries of Western civilization 
sharpened to the bloody tip of the knife 
we are pointing at anything
that flickers, flowers, and beats 
our hearts, the trees, and the stars
all set to be slaughtered 
in the Anthropocene™ we have set
as revenge for the exile;
the cumulative closing act 
of a Shakespearean tragedy
the fulmination of a prophecy
that this kingdom of means will end  
when the woods reclaim their roots 

Is it wrong to be somewhat warmed°
by the scientific consensus that 
the icecaps are melting at an alarming rate?
So that the idiom, of saying something
is moving at a glacial pace
— such as the time and the
                                  space that still separates us —
— or how trees migrate and
                          mitigate the heating of the Earth —
might mean something
                                        aside from the apocalypse 
could happen, and
soon?
Surely life should really be shouted
always until the end
in all caps
As in ICECAPS?
As in TREETOPS?
As in LOVE?

Of course the comments 
underneath
are all angry and frightened denial;
pedants pointing out that “technically speaking” the polar bear
in that Greenpeace ad 
wasn’t killed by climate change, 
it actually 
starved,
which, for some reason
seems like a better death sentence
for humans 
to accept 
than the alternative,
which is that 
things only ever happen and hunger
like this 
because of the inevitable tragedies
of life, some brutal instinct within the world
that keeps the earth turning
as if acting on its axis
and us searching 
                      from the stars 
                                                  to our skulls
for the solace of souls
as if they might fall 
upon us 
somewhere within the gentle grace 
of snowflakes

I am like the Muir glacier
ominously mollified and falling apart
Retreating from its namesake
 — who sung of snow melting into music —
and looking more, each day 
like a puddling punchline 
to humanity’s time on earth
spent burning the dead things 
up out of the ground
or chopping the forests down
until the sky falls in 
so that a hard rain is forever about to fall
further fuel for the forest fires  
spreading each season
like hands hurrying to meet 
                                across 
the space left on
                              the face of the 
                  ticking 
      doomsday
clock

I am putting entire ecosystems at risk
with my spiking hot heart
burning holes in everything;
they say oceans are rising 
to the occasion 

But becoming a puddle 
is a trick 
for wicked Western witches 
who want to exit their narratives 
                                                              dramatically
finally embracing their role as the villain
of someone else’s story

Speaking of which,
is that Frankenstein’s motherless monster
returning to us
 — all hot and bothered
stumbling through a forest 
of blasted tree stumps 
cursing a fate in which he must 
                                           wretchedly wander —
because he was unable to find any wood 
with which
to burn 
himself 
alive?

I am a famished polar bear
a monster made of man
                                          anxiously    
                                                                    adrift 
                    on an ice floe
Lingering upon thresholds where I don’t belong
desperately hungry
One of the few nonhuman animals that will actively hunt out
the human heart
when their lives depend upon
Devouring it

Harriet, I want you 
to eat my heart out of me
so that we can collapse and coalesce
into one another’s pulsating blood memory 
like a catastrophic climatic event,
a wildfire lighting up the night’s horizon;
an aortic aurora, 
or an ocean ablaze,
a sun that won’t set
the constellations inextinguishable in their 
                         careening 
                               cartwheeling 
      conflagration

Because seeing glaciers split from themselves,
accompanied by the thunderous sound 
of centuries of ice
                                falling 
                                           in sheets and shards
ages dissolving into the sea
Drifting as snow stardust
Pollux and Castor melting before me
Seems like an appropriate analogy for the sense
that my heart is cleaved clean
from myself
when it is not beating by yours
and that the world might end
if we cannot somehow 
                                          stich 
                                                   our-selves 
                         back 
together 

Image: Naja Bertolt Jensen
 

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