Moving Glaciers
By John Herlihy

The glaciers move unnoticed on their own,
With the stealth of shadows you have ever known.
The glaciers move majestically for their incredible size;
Their presence cannot be mistaken in another guise.
The glaciers move with steady determination of mind;
Nothing can stop them, with a force of any other kind.
The glaciers have taken millennia to appear and evolve;
Snowflake by snowflake, a puzzle that needs to be solved.
The glaciers may one day give up the ghost and disappear;
But not before a new order of nature makes ready to appear.

They crouch and creep with the tenacity of a stalking cat;
They lay themselves down the mountain like a winter mat.
Nature speaks volumes to humanity without saying a word;
The depths of outer space reach down but nothing is heard.
Mountains lift their noble heads to reveal white scalps;
The mountain peaks reach for the sky in the winter Alps.
The meadows, the valleys and the rivers run in-between,
They are seldom heard, but they are glorious when seen.
Glaciers contain a presence that is mighty in situ to behold;
Their message gets lost in remote regions never to be told.

To gaze on a moving glacier is a memory never to be forgot;
Who can hear the whisper of its voice and remember it not.
There is a glacier within me that moves with a creepy crawl;
When I erect barriers within, it simply breaks down the wall.
There are forces in nature that cannot be corralled or stopped;
They will send forth their expression without being cropped.
Whether outside in winter’s world or inside the human brain;
Primitive forces lead us gently forward in nature’s glacial train.
In the primordial hour when Adam gave everything its name,
The ice stream made an appearance, its grand beauty to claim.