The Cameron Glaciers: Cantata for a Melting
There but for the grace There but for the gouge and grind I walk upstream to pass the lapse in time
Hopping like a wren in the shadow of the Pacific All ecstatic fern-drenched clamor Ringing the girth of a towering fir
Soaking up the countenance of a western toad There but for the great oxidation There to grease the northern ice sheet
10,000 years ago pulled down like a blind Retracted into the spool of itself With a sudden thwack the fragments
Left behind I can’t say how long I waited Dallying in retrospect one flake stuck To its shadow another struck from stone
Layers of mist condensing into hoar frost No shale too sharp to cut through breath Abated snow on snow upgraded
To hammer honed to chisel fastened There but for the cirque and wheel There to carve a mountain steeped in silence
So old it forgot there’d ever burn A thing like speech a tongue to strike A name from tundra thunder grin
A cliffhanger where the air grew thin Tossing out gear teeth like rhetorical Questions what are we doing
Where are we driving to in this Holocene Hothouse anthropomorphic Ambulance dripping like an IV
There but for the three ring circus The bucket list the washed out wish Triptych shields disbanding under the weight
Of summer’s least likely blue leaking from within The trident hydra-headed in all its thrashing Pulling another all-nighter
To master the trivial in pursuit Three forks gathering up the small talk That trace of milk the salmon swallow
Up the gravel-braided stream Like memory unraveling at three removes Down a medial moraine the bare ice
Almost weeping the river gushing full of voices All those silences gored and peeled away Babbling a lullaby to a solitary hiker
To stall my thirst I roll a pebble beneath my tongue Cameron Gray Wolf Dungeness
Arête-serrated moss-dabbled the river softer now The snowshoe hare in summer brown The swallowtail in jungle garb above the ice
North facing who navigate by drip or leap Across the creek in spate spilling its secrets The pebble dribbled the boulder strewn
The last erratic dropped at the vanishing point There but for the grist and till There to spit the glacier’s lasting shine
"I am guided by the natural history of language, its fossil record in etymology, its shape-shifting churn in the substrate of memory, family, and cultural identity, as reflected in our extended geography—the flora, fauna, and geological record of the Pacific NW.
"I think of poetry as a mode of inquiry, a method of investigation, a direct encounter with the wild animal fact of time and place. A poem is a core sample, a deep dive into layers of sound, meaning, and understanding. Where language finds or fails the world in motion, I am drawn to both history and possibility—all that is lost reinventing itself, remembering itself, generation after generation, like glacial flour in the melting stream. My poems illuminate that past which is present, the forms which survive our vanishing.
"I have been hiking and climbing in the Cascades and Olympics for three decades now, tracking mountain ecology through the seasons. The Terminus project has helped bring a sharper focus to the kind of ecological inquiry I, like many writers and artists, feel most engaged in now: how to reckon with enormous change, much of it the result of our own heedless activity on the planet. Despite everything, I still recognize hope in the storytelling geology of mountains and forests, rivers and canyons—where deep time enlarges our sense of responsibility to each other and the natural worlds we serve." -Kevin Craft Meet the artist: Kevin CraftKevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community College. His previous books include Solar Prominence, selected by Vern Rutsala for the Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books (2005) and Vagrants & Accidentals, published in the Pacific Northwest Poets Series by the University of Washington Press (2017). He is the recipient of fellowships from Artist Trust, The Camargo Foundation, The Bogliasco Foundation, PLAYA, and MacDowell, among others. In 2022 he was an Artist in Residence at Olympic National Park. Editor of Poetry Northwest from 2009 – 2016, he now serves Publisher and Executive Editor of Poetry NW Editions. 
More about the Cameron GlaciersThese small glaciers occupy cirques on the north slopes of Mt. Cameron and feed the Dungeness River watershed. Though lingering winter snow covers much of the small glaciers in both images, the reference arrow illustrates thinning where glacial ice was clearly visible in 1970.
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Last updated: April 19, 2023