ADMONITORY ODE TO MOUNT RANIER

by Joel Savishinsky

The top of Mount Rainier is no longer the top of Mount Rainier. The frozen ice cap on top of Washington’s iconic mountain—recognized for generations as the tippy top—is melting as the atmosphere warms. Now, that frozen dome has sunk below a rocky patch on the mountain’s southwest rim, crowning that spot as the new highest point. —Seattle Times, October 6, 2024. Photo: Eric Gilbertson poses Sept. 21 on Mount Rainier’s southwest rim, the new highest point of the mountain, with the Columbia Crest, the mountain’s former highest point, in the background. (Courtesy of Ross Wallette)

Perhaps it is too much 
to expect any of us to
stand tall in these times,
to measure up to what
we once were at 
the peak of our reputations.
 
Maybe this is what happens
when you’ve stood for ages
with your head in the clouds,
unaware of how each year
grinds you down a bit,
too busy looking down on
everyone else to notice
that people don’t 
look up at you quite 
in the way they used to.
 
Yes, your admirers will still
grapple with your magnitude,
admire your posture and
profile, but as the decades 
wear on and wear you down, 
like the rest of us you will
probably need to learn
to get over yourself.
 
If not, you’ll only get more
upset, lose your cool,
blow your top, and
shrink even more
in our estimation.
 

Joel Savishinsky moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014 at the age of 70. In the years since then, he has lost at least 1 ¼ inches of height. He is a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. In 2023, The Poetry Box published his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. His work has also appeared in Beyond Words, Blink-Ink, The Decolonial Passage, The New York Times, The New Verse News, Passager, and Willawaw.

ON THIN ICE

by Anne Gruner

"[Thwaites], a massive Antarctic glacier, which could raise global sea levels by up to two feet if it melts, is far more exposed to warm ocean water than previously believed, according to a [newly published]study...." —The Washington Post, May 20, 2024.

We knew you were sickly but hoped you'd recover,
not believing you were on your deathbed.
Then we x-rayed you from space, just to be sure,
and like many x-rays they brought bad news.
 
As your shining face peers at the sun,
a deadly disease eats away your soft underbelly—
an affliction we don't fully grasp—
understanding its cause, but not its progression.
 
Warm, salty water seeps into a gaping wound
with every breath of tide you take, 
rising and falling, an eroding necrosis,
accelerating without notice until it's too late.
 
We thought you would live thousands of years,
but now fear your death in decades—
with consequences so dire
we call you "Doomsday."

 
A Pushcart-nominated writer, Anne Gruner's poetry has appeared in over a dozen print and on-line publications, including Amsterdam Quarterly Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Written Tales, and Humans of the World. Anne lives in McLean, Virginia with her husband and two golden retrievers.

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MATTERS

by L. Lois

the chill in the air

means the glacier ravines

running down the peaks

jutting above the treeline

to the north

are vertical cuts of white

this bench sits low

comfortably leaning back

with the lake at my feet

the surface broken

by the gentle rippling

of the wind

 

a lone eagle circles

on early spring's

thermal winds

and the cherry blossoms

I passed on my way

are holding fast

in the lingering crispness

distant blue skies are lighter

overhead

coloring is calm

painted solid for peacefulness

rounded white clouds

perch as if to tell

the mountains where they should be

ducks scatter

when the Canadian geese

come in for a noisy

landing

two herons fly by

to the west 

and their rookery's young

New York and Washington on fire

Trump's on criminal trial

Netanyahu plays chess with Hamas and Iran

Putin threatens Ukraine’s future

while Congress dithers on the eve of chaos

everything here

ignores our foolishness

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.

AN OKWARD SITUATION

by Julie Steiner

Video published on Aug 19, 2019

Since "jökull" means "ice sheet," not "rock,"
we're re-christening Okjökull "Ok."
By the time we re-brand
balmy Iceland as "Land,"
will we stop calling climate change "schlock"?

Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego. Besides the TheNewVerse.News, the venues in which her poetry has appeared include the Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, and the Asses of Parnassus.

ICE AND FIRE

by James Penha

after Frost . . . after Francis . . . after Charleston

Some see America destroyed by hate;
others forecast a torrid flood as its fate.

I feel its glacial faults cracking 'long lines
      blue and red and black and white,
thence to implode and dissolve, O Columbia!
      into the ocean, a gem out of sight.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.

SNOW BEFORE THANKSGIVING

by Laura Rodley

Is the snow that hovers in these low slung clouds
particles of glaciers evaporated, waiting
to fall, mirrors of penguins and polar bears,
sluggish fish, even the midnight sky
that beam upon the mirror, blue on blue white ice
where the edges creak, broken sky,
broken mirrors of the ocean’s depths,
whales in fact that breach
searching for air, ready to go home.

If so, glaciers melting, ready to fall,
arrest drivers surging home for Thanksgiving,
how thousands of years of solidness
is now a lake, one too cold to swim in
but close to our hearts, this affinity
for holding on, for letting go, for forgiveness.
Will the glaciers forgive warmer waters?
Will the glaciers forgive their melting?
They have no hands to cover themselves,
to swim somewhere else; their solidity,
calm steadiness is what we seek,
and tomorrow it will snow, glaciers
letting go, freeing themselves as crystals fall
heavy on the grounds, seeking saviors.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

WHITHER WEATHER #2: FIRE OR ICE

by Tricia Knoll

Image source: KXL

The poet weighed the ends of flame and freeze
as if the fulcrum balanced between love and hate.

We are coming to know enough of both
to see the crux is fog of mind and sloth.

The west burns, the south freezes,
the ice is a river we cannot push.

Fire takes the wildwood
we saw first in black and white

now mixed sooty ash and snow.
The glaciers melt like films

children will never see,
the peaches they will not eat.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland poet, snowbound alone in her house for seven days. Her chapbook Urban Wild is now available from Finishing Line Press.