Every ten thousand years or so
a monstrous tongue of ice
scours this valley,
leaving a billion stones behind,
baby tooth to boulder-sized
in cold memorial, to remind
the cedar and the trout
and mostly man
how subject we are to ages.

To prepare, I ask this summer's
silvery-green mountain
to enter my head
and be a permanent scene
brushed on the Chinese lantern
of my brain,
so when the mile-thick ice
with its clear blue heart
plows slopes bare again,
I won't rely
solely on furs and fire.