My Life as a Glacier

Sometimes it is a rush of action

followed by an eon of torpor

Sometimes it is one step forward

two steps back

Whatever the pace

I capture all that I encounter

and sweep it along in my travels

until I can bear it no more

Dirt and debris, entire boulders 

and tiny bits of other lives

are carried with me and deposited 

whenever I pause, wherever I stop

You will know my path by 

what I leave behind: 

heaps of displaced snow and sediment

trenches where new streams will flow

Battered minds and hearts 

shape a somber moraine

while particles of hope

shimmer in the deepest crevasse