Before any footsteps, before any cry,
Ice hewed the mountains, etched earth and sky.
A silent architect, cold, patient, and grand,
It inscribed the planet’s memory, shaping the land.

Its blinding white armor, a sentinel spun,
Shielded the world from the wrath of the sun.
A balance so fragile—celestial ballet—
Without it, the blue world dims into gray.

We are late arrivals, children of thaw,
Seasons and harvests that ice once made law.
Yet now, with engines, relentless hunger, and flame,
We unravel the wonders that once gave us our name.

Ice keeps the chronicles, secrets of air,
Bubbles of centuries, histories laid bare.
Each stratum a ledger, each crystal a prayer—
History liquefies, vanishing—where?

The sea rises hungry, devouring the shore,
Millions uprooted—displaced evermore.
No borders or armies, just climate’s command,
A tide of lost futures sweeps over the land.

Goldilocks planet, neither too hot nor too cold,
Balanced by fortune through epochs untold.
We tilt the scales blindly for comfort and gain,
And wager our Eden for profit—and pain.

Ice is remembrance, a sentinel muse—
Its vanishing hush is a fate we can’t choose.
What world will we forge, what mark will we cast,
If the reign of the glaciers is truly our last?

Yet within every ending, a challenge remains:
Can wisdom emerge from irreversible change?
The mirror of ice does more than accuse—
It reveals the true cost of the futures we choose.

And when the last white citadel crumbles to brine,
No shelter remains from the feverish shine.
The air thick with silence, the oceans unbound—
A world unmoored, where no refuge is found.

The sun stares unblinking, the shadows erased,
Old seasons forgotten, all boundaries effaced.
In the echo of glaciers, a warning resounds:
When ice is a memory, only ruin surrounds.