It was summer all winter. / It was melting
Three friends in hospital in a week is surely three too many, you think, and then you remember the rest of the world.
Breathe in, breathe out, be glad it was not another kind of call, light a candle, rue the day, say a prayer, burn some sage, rally the group chat, count your blessings, keep going, count to ten, find ways to be useful, manage the cognitive dissonance of existing in 2024.
Ask those who may know: best gifts for folks facing long-term hospitalizations / complex surgeries? Go.
Attribution
XI
They explored the poles
for offshore drilling.
Once, we blocked them,
In that we understood
The risk of an oil spill
For a glacier.
XII
The sea is rising.
The glacier must be retreating.
XIII
It was summer all winter.
It was melting
And it was going to melt.
The glacier fits
In our warm-hands.
— from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens) by Craig Santos Perez