7,000 feet up Mount Rainier,
inside Paradise Glacier, walls
and ceiling glow blue, half
a million years compacting
snow. Through a round opening
I stoop to enter, stand but can’t
stretch out my arms. Enclosed,
womb-like, some presence makes
me feel beheld, silence-wrapped.
Summer melts made globby knobs
on cave roof and walls but warming
Earth works differently. Behind
melting ice, Paradise retreats for
decades. The cave where I’d stood
shrinks, sinks, the whole vast network
of interconnected caves, world’s
largest, gone.
Sixteen when I stood inside that cave,
old woman now, in memory I see
again that glow-blue light. Silence
wraps me still, recall I was beheld.
