My Life as a Glacier


Sometimes it is a rush of action
followed by an eon of torpor

Sometimes it is one step forward
two steps back

Whatever the pace
I capture all that I encounter

and sweep it along in my travels
until I can bear it no more

Dirt and debris
entire boulders

and tiny bits of other lives
are carried with me and

deposited whenever I pause
wherever I stop

You will know my path by
what I leave behind:

heaps of displaced snow and sediment
trenches where new streams will flow

Battered minds and hearts
shape a somber moraine

while particles of hope
shimmer in the deepest crevasse