September Together

By Elizabeth Shack

Last September, we hiked the forest
beside the fog-drenched sea.
Followed a swift stream
bridged with salmon spawning,
returning from gray Pacific homes.
Switchbacked beside a waterfall
sparkling down steep granite.

Emerged into sunlight with a view
of lichen-painted rock
and the blue-white ice
that once sculpted this verdant valley.

Is still sculpting:
Just as moss and fern carpeted bare rock,
as alder and spruce sprouted,
as forest appeared where glacier receded,

today melting ice reshapes coasts,
forests flame to ash,
grasslands wither to desert,
rivers run to dust.

This September, whales still sing in the sea.

Will you fight with me
for this vibrant,
dying world?

Elizabeth Shack lives in central Illinois with her spouse, cat, and an expanding collection of art supplies and fitness equipment. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The MacGuffin, Writers Resist, Daily Science Fiction, and other magazines and anthologies. She attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for poetry in 2022. For more of Elizabeth’s work, visit her website.

Photo credit: “Humpback Whale” by J. Maughn via a Creative Commons license.

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