ALASKA

SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME

Frozen tropical spoors lie below.
Ice rivers carve mountain bones
vast as the Niger desert and Amazonian swamps.

Is the sudden green I see a sign of global warming?
“Tundra does not thaw,” they said.

This mother-bed of water’s power.
This sanctuary of the seas.
Our Arctic and Antarctica.
Could you release your ice and rock?

The answer, I fear, lies with you and me.

—Emily Vargas-Baron (CC ’99)
Flight from Chicago to Tokyo
August 8, 2001