I don’t think you mind
that you’re melting.
Water complies
with the spirit of its nature,
shifts as easily as sunlight
penetrates atmosphere.
What seems to us
a dramatic collapse—
thunderous crash
as tons of ice tumble
—for you is a natural response
to change.
Never mind
how your frozen flow once shaped
mountains, valleys, lakes—
how you fed the life
that teemed there.
You will survive
as water rising on our shores,
as vapor joining sky.
Molecules of air
long locked in your vast shelf
effervesce
in arctic light
while stupefied,
we watch from tour ships
the crack and slide
of one more shrine
to a world that sustained us.
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist by day, writer and community volunteer by night, in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry and prose have appeared in Welter, Third Wednesday, The Main Street Rag, Lunch Ticket, The Ocotillo Review and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming at Amethyst Review, Hole-in-the-Head Review and The Perch Magazine.