night at cracker lake, glacier national park
150 glaciers were present in the park in 1850; today 26 glaciers remain – U.S.G.S.
above the castellated ridge
ice dislodges barren battlements
snow disaggregates stone
our cognate gnawing its bones
somewhere a prehensile wolf
augers ivory
growls over gristle
skins sinew skeletal –
we follow warm mud plops
thick with thimbleberry
a plodding grizzly –
blood relative exile roan.
in the tent at dusk we float
flotsam in an old sea
where whale plunge
toward a furlowed future
no nostalgia here
just you, me
the one earth, gravid-
void hungry alone.
but blue basin sluices
darkness inside us
hope’s ovule buds: nut marrow
we howl our echoes
begetting song floes long disowned
below a scoured ridge, ecstasy
bares glacial teeth, carves teal fractals
avalanches memory
(bellies full of berries)
thunder
chants us home
miscarriage at the edge, had rien, thailand
“The total area experiencing coral reef damage in Thailand
has increased from 30% to 77% in just one decade,
according to marine ecologist Asst Prof Thon Thamrongnawasawat.”
Bangkok Post, 29 January 2018
on lithic sand
south china sea
pale green wavelets lick
violet necked cowries
as froth lathers my fingers.
soft-shelled creatures
shuck their shells vacant,
my fingers strum
sterile coral littering
this thalassic homeland.
I don’t need a map
to tell me what isn’t here
my own chamber
a bloodied carapace echoing
barrenness back to me.
dear stillborn scion and silent heir:
today as whimbrels skim
simmering currents
while the sun’s strange tentacles
overbrine a warming sea
reef the main mast with me in requiem
for fevered broken waters
scrum the future
with memory
while I graft our grief for sails.
Anne Bergeron writes, gardens, and spins wool in a handmade house she built with her husband on a wooded homestead in eastern Vermont. Five sheep, fourteen chickens, an occasional guinea fowl, and two dogs roam the meadow, while coyote, deer, fox, and bobcat roam the forest. Anne teaches at a small rural academy, practices Thai massage, and is a contributing writer for the environmental journal Dark Matter: Women Witnessing. Her essays and poems can be found in Blueline Magazine, The Hopper, and Dark Mountain.
