Counting on Climate Change

Forty-one seconds
of voice mail

forty-one seconds
of his voice

Hi, Mom.
It’s me.
I don’t know
exactly
what to say?
But
I want to talk to you—

Five years
six months
two whole days

of icy silence

broken

A glacier
tempered
by grief
begins
to melt

calving

into a warming sea

*

Wynne Brown writes from the Arizona lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. Her work has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Wild Roof Journal, Blue Guitar, Oasis Journal, The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide by Eric Magrane and Christopher Cokinos (University of Arizona Press), and Spilled: A Collection by the Dry River Poets (Casa Luna Press). Her most recent book, The Forgotten Botanist: Sara Plummer Lemmon’s Life of Science and Art (2021, University of Nebraska Press), won a 2022 Spur Award for Best Western Biography. She was the 2022 Spring Pima County Public Library Writer in Residence in Tucson. Her website is wynne@wynnebrown.com.