Touching Glaciers

There was a time when I was 25
Dancing barefoot in a field of snow
Alone.
I had touched a glacier
That is no longer there.
Little did I realize then
How appropriate my joy and celebration
For the moment has surely gone.
Summers seem to swelter
While winters long for snow.
Coastlines slowly erode and 
Continent-sized icebergs
Heave themselves into the oceans.
I watch what the birds do, daily
For some indication of threat.
They watch the same strange skies
We witness from wildfires in the North.
Storms seem radical,
Like some rebellious youth
Reacting to the realization
That the generation before
Has failed them.
The Fall has come
And what we still call Winter
Is coming.
I wonder how much further 
I now need to travel 
To touch a glacier?

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Beat Poet Laureate of Maine 2024-2026, Claire Conroy has self-published two books of poetry (“Listen” in 2018 and “Silent” in 2022) and a chapbook (“Rumors From Dead Lips” in 2024). Born in Portsmouth, NH, she is a proud board member of the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program and is the host of their open mic, The HOOT. She has had over a dozen anthologies and has been translated into Hindi by Devesh Path Sariya. Claire lives in Sanford, Maine.