The Library Beneath the Glacier

At dawn the glacier opens a blue throat, shelved with trapped summers, pollen, ash. I carry a lantern down the meltwater stairs, and the cold reads me before I read it.

Each layer is a year laid thin as onion skin, a hush of campfire smoke, a war, a spring flood. Minnows flicker in pockets of clear time, silver punctuation in the long sentence of ice.

Above, towns boil kettles, miss buses, kiss in doorways; below, their weather sleeps in crystal envelopes. I slide one free and hold it to my ear: rain from 1912, still rehearsing its applause.

When noon arrives, the cave exhales and narrows. I climb out wet to the ankles, bright with centuries. On the moraine, wind turns my notes to flags, and the mountain closes its book without a sound.