rose mist, fell snow
heavy as two million winters
forging razor-wheels
rolled southward from the pole
digging, churning, floating
boulders in a stream of ice
shaving the mountaintops
dragging pieces to the shore
scooping valleys, smoothing
beaches
pulverizing bone and stone
soft as new snow.
Under sun far off the ice
rose and deepened, frozen mires
grabbing, holding all they touched
in thrall, monster machines
dispassionate and fair, plowing
everything before them, burying
everything they plowed, spreading
slow avalanche.
All the water was ice
land a mile beneath,
wrinkled sheets stored frozen.
A hundred centuries of winter
ended when the sun moved
close enough to melt the edge.
Dripping, draining rivulets,
arms that stretched around,
beneath,
melting everything they touched
surreptitiously as spring.
A thousand years, give or take,
before a summer time that bared
the landscape, sifting gravel,
filling lake-bowls in the
mountains,
what was left of them, pocked
as ancient foreheads, bald.
Like the trout-fry, tiny waters
squirmed through fissures in the
cliffs,
growing larger, swimming faster,
channeling deep bedrock, splashing
granite gorges, feeding
bigger waters—Connecticut,
Androscoggin, Pemigewasset,
Saco.
Drained, the mountains lifted, seducing
forests from beyond the ice,
catamount, chickadee, and rabbit
hiding in thickets of poplar and
fir.
Mountain walls held ice
slowing rivers, buying time
for men with clovis points and songs
rolling like avalanches:
We, the children of Pangea,
we, the Ones the ice allowed,
we are borne of winds and waters.
We are borne of suns and stones.
We hear the mountains . . . .