Given these fraught times, I appreciate that the speaker of this week’s poem is something much larger and older than ourselves: a glacier. I love the simplicity in how this glacier looks back on its time as ice, and how tenderly it speaks to the sea with which it will soon become one.

Doug “Woody” Woodsum has published poetry, prose and cartoons widely for several decades. In 1995, he changed his focus from his own writing to teach English in rural Carrabec High in North Anson. In recent years, his writings lean toward prose in service of his work in education and conservation.

 

Melting

By Doug Woody Woodsum

 

Being a glacier, I remember birth,

The waves of stars falling over the years,

White, six-pointed stars descending to form

My soul. On my birthday, it always snows.

 

Being the sea, you wait for everything

With motherly love. You eat continents

Of land, continents of ice. Your blue tongue

Catches snow. You taste like salt. You make sand.

 

I’m inland now, grinding the path that ends

At your door. I’ll pause for weeks on the shore

Before I let go. You will let me in

Then begin to melt me down as I float.

 

Months later you’ll ask me, “Do you love me?”

I’ll answer you, “Does the sea love the sea?

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Melting” copyright 1994 by Douglas Woodsum. Reprinted from Colorado Review, 1994, by permission of the author.