One day soon it will be the pikas

their habitat finally eaten up

then the columbines

it’ll be too warm too dry

then another year it’ll be the snow

that used to sit on the mountains

people will tell tales

of glaciers of snowpack

of far of distant white

but those stories will be myths

then winter itself will be too

then the forests

long since fallen

first to pine beetles

then the fire

we will one day wonder

what was once here

we will one day see all this

that is still abounding

still somehow surviving

disappear

like some awful magic

we will put all this

beneath a blanket of haze

and ta da

it will be gone

we have done it before

in Colorado

and in the rest of the world

ask the bison

the beaver

the wolverine

all these countless

stagehands to our doom

ask how we can make so much

disappear

so go and be in it

before it is gone

because it will be

it’s all going faster

than any of us want to know

it’s going away all the time 

like the last bit of breath

go and walk the mountains

while they still bloom

Alexander Shalom Joseph is an award-winning poet, writer and playwright from Gilpin County, and is the author of seven published books. You can find his work and more information about him at alexandershalomjoseph.com.