Start early. Pleistocene.
3 a.m. Let the Laurentide Ice Shield
wrench surface snow, blast
great pans of pale frozen foam.
Thunder out. Cacophony of cold,
glacial-scour. Scoop a basin
five miles across.
Let the bowl corrugate.
Beneath the plain,
concavitate in slow ragged folds.
Sink potholes. Shove mountain tops
from below stony roots. Spall,
brinell, press walls whipped with sleet.
Penance the ice. Endure
the murk, the minutes, millennia.
Empty out the salt sea.
Watersheds, drains,
daily rains gelatinate the sky.
Conjure blue then,
olive-green, brown, streaks of violet gold,
precipitation’s long sombre hush. Rubble,
river mouth, almighty mud.
All things fall away, sink
into brokenness.
Finally,
ripple-scum and shore fog, water
grey-pocked – but moving,
currents, then caps of white,
the lake’s silver face
scudded with wind.