I'm lucky enough to live in a place where it's easy to go to the mountains. It's also easy to see and feel just how fast the glaciers are melting due to climate change. You will see a stark naked line where the greenery stops, and there’s only rubble below, all the way into the valley where ice used to be. You feel the pain of it, because that hiking path has been buried under a rockfall. If you ski down the Vallee Blanche, you'll end the route at least 12 stories below the train platform, and every step climbing up the stairs, skis on your back, your feet aching in those heavy boots, you're reminded of how much bigger the glacier used to be just a few decades ago.
This poem was one way to make that pain visible to the rest of the world. It's never too late to start.
Many thanks to Hannah Webster and all of the Michigan Quarterly Review editors for including it in their latest print issue, as well as Khaled Mattawa for the deeply inspiring foreword. Order your copy here.
Le Tour Glacier, France
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