In Memory of Thwaites Glacier

A new oceanographic

ice fades from underneath.

they knew.  Tunnels rut

miles of eyeless organisms, carry

of earth to pole.  The ice looses

empties itself.  Crust crumbles

 

revelation: glacial

The ocean plumbs deeper than

floor, caverned under

water from belt

its undersides,

into iceberg-speckled sea.

 

Once the glacier stiffed its lower lip,

Now she slopes,

achievements

loose diamonds

of watery energy inside.

Once bound together

a frozen mountain. Now,

mutinied

 

 

rugged

a mother emptynested

into the world

or loose cannons,

Ready to unleash

by millennial ice,

with her child soldiers

the mountain threatens

 

 

self-protective.

having sent her

Necklace shattered into

sons with an excess

at a split second

the bergs girded

forcibly

to crash.

Author: Ivy Raff

Ivy Raff’s debut chapbook, Rooted and Reduced to Dust (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2024), was hailed by Jimmy Santiago Baca as “sensuous, glowing with an undercarriage of mystique.” Her poetry appears in The American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod International Journal, and West Trade Review, among numerous others, and is anthologized in Spectrum: Poetry Celebrating Identity. Currently nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Ivy’s work has garnered scholarship support from the Colgate Writers’ Conference as well as residencies with Atlantic Center for the Arts and Alaska State Parks. She lives and bakes artisan challah in Northern New Jersey.

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