Ice Flow

We were vapour once, buoyant and free in a cloud
sailing high and imperious over the land.
There was dust in the air, that had travelled the world:
microscopic, so light it was borne by the wind
as if it was nothing at all. Yet these fragments
of far-away stone were still solid, their surfaces
tiny but hard as the rock they once were, so cold
we condensed into droplets and instantly froze.
We were crystals, still toys of the wind, but we grew
as more vapour transformed on our skin, forming spikes
in a six-sided symmetry: now we had shape
and the weight that would carry us softly to earth.

Here we gathered in billions, crushed down over time
from the delicate structures we were in the sky
into solid mass, cold, hard and heavy. It seemed
we would rest there for ever, becoming like stone.
We had fallen on mountains, their sides tall and steep.
In the winter we gripped them in vices of ice
but each storm made us heavier. In time, the sun
became stronger and weakened us, making us bleed.
Under constant assault, how we groaned and we creaked
as the stuff of us fissured beneath its own weight
and our hold on that hillside was loosened, until
in the slick of our own blood, we started to move.