Some words for the week

on the way home from the job

up the winding roads

overlooking the aspen valleys

carved by one great glaciers

now reduced to near dry creeks

feeling the early summer heat

stronger in June

than it used to be in August

I get a sense of cycles eons long

the great melting

the great freezing

the great melting again

how many times

has that happened

and how many more

will it repeat

and here we are

working our days away

praying eating trying to sleep

getting gas falling in love

waiting in traffic

imagining great mountains of ice

deep oceans full of things dead

for thousands of times longer

than the farthest reaches

of human time

it’s sort of a miracle

I come to think

how much damage we have done

in our blip of a moment

in the great spinning

of days and centuries

there are cycles yes

but we’ve helped to speed them

helped to make the coming flood

that much sooner

and when these valleys

are carved anew

by future ice age glaciers

melting into rivers once again

all that will be left of us

will be plastic pieces

stuck frozen in water

and nothing else

in all we hurt and hoped for

only plastic will remain

all the good poems

the great loves

the perfect summer evenings

the genius ideas

all this will fade long before

the Coke bottle

the guy in front of me

on a motorcycle

just littered onto

the side of the road

Alexander Shalom Joseph is a writer from Gilpin County. He is a published author. For more information and to subscribe to Alexander’s Newsletter go to alexandershalomjoseph.com