Glaciers and Glacial Lakes

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

This late winter, I read David Alt's Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods, which in part inspired the following poem.  I don't know if the word "humongous" screams scientific gravitas, but the book is an enthralling, and well-written, epic of water and ice. See:

http://hugefloods.com/LakeMissoula.html  (The area of Glacier National Park depicted in the postcard was under different influences in the most recent Ice Age than was Glacial Lake Missoula.)

 

The Missoula Floods

I remember the Missoula Floods, Missoula Breaks, scrubbed, upholstered the camper in 1976.  Spherical lobbed the dung potato remonstrance, tire swing varve the sachem, petroglyph smoulders the unwanted archaism.  Lake shore ripples long the Eocene, hippo upholstered the sabre-tooted alchemist Li He the fey diurnal the Paris Commune.  Long Wroclaw the communist, scablands, cinder cone the Mound Gerard De Nerval the sinus of the extinct sloth.  Ice Ages have come and gone, not Pleiades, the what you call it, loyalty oath, cataclysmic events oncet spell checked the  almighty, Zeus the Yog-Sothoth, Zoroaster smelling the void, a really boring book. 

Glacial Lake Colombia, flushing Cuba Roosevelt the socialist, purple-assed Baboon inseminating the deck musical chairs, Titanic, one of us is illumined.  Boat oar withering to piano vine puddle, Clark Fork River, Hamilton unvanquished, magpie smoldering to pinion and hail snow.  Mad Hatter squall Lautorell, Lazy z squamous cipher, artichoke lemon lemur sapiens Jean the martyr.

 

JF

March 9, 2013