The Last Glacier

Through the tunnel of the glacier
I see the ancestral record
dripping to the floor.
Wet stone, papyrus of snow.
Diary of ice and ages,
all gone in the malevolent summer.
The talons of heat
coming from our fires.
The breath of ruined forests.
But the cold is still here.
A vault of white crystal,
the story still pre-versed.
We have only read a few of its poems.
The minutes of cold
that separated equator from
the barren face of the poles.
But everywhere the story
is disappearing.
The lullabies and conquests.
The vast white wilderness
that came and went.
We are burning up the world,
delivering our sentence.