Almost Gone Poem by Jim Manning

Hiking in Oregon on the slope of North Sister,
I meet a backpacker, handle Mad Dog—rabid,
or gnashing his teeth—thoroughly pissed.
Also known as, well maybe, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah is young, perhaps twenty.
I give him a grandfatherly nod,
a youthful hi, deposit my daypack
alongside his massive backpack.

Scowling at North Sister,
he gestures—she’s dying.
I follow his gaze to Collier Glacier
grinding down the west slope.

Its forward blade is withdrawing.
In Mad Dog lingo, dying.
Not in my lifetime, I think.
But, what future composer

will sing for Jeremiah—a hymn
to nature or jingle to commerce?
Pure water, hygienic air or allusions to
free parking on top of Mount Everest.

The cycle of nature is morphed—
great pits opened by Job-like behemoths
processing, manufacturing, selling—
burying redundancies, obsolescence;

useless products and used up people—
energy for methane-challenged creatures.

Who will be the new poets—?
arranging dry science into fertile
similes, metaphors; the creators
of allegories, mordant fiction.

We know the theme, keep a chronicle
headed by air, water; sub-topic—trees,
grizzly, wolf, man—the almost gone.

A list smolders in Jeremiah’s eyes—
drought, pestilence, death.