From the lecture hall projector beams
a phantom glacier, filling the screen with a map of Colorado.
The colorful shading illustrates the decline in annual
snowfall. A red cloud overwhelms this town where streams
diminish, where a teenager skims a manual,
cleaning her semiauto
for weekend mornings hunting elk
by ponderosa pines each year less green, half of them tinder.
Down Main Street denim pockets jingle coins and keys
to pickups still uncaked by rock salt. Skiers sulk.
An empty chairlift sways in a dry breeze.
The sun shines all winter.
Recycled paper notebooks weigh
the backpack zipped for the walk to biology where jellyfish
on television swarm the vacant sea as lamps
the lighting aisle at Lowe’s, where solar panels pay
for themselves in ten years, blurring a glimpse
too real, too nightmarish
for direct examination—the day
when power fails—though the neon vacancy at the motel
shines on, and preppers hoard their nails and batteries.
Monarch migrations dwindle, AM stations decay.
Thermometers fluctuate near thirty degrees.
A chickadee chimes like a bell.
