Ice Cathedral

Somewhere in the mountains,
past where trails give up trying,
a waterfall freezes in private

No one named this place
No one marked it on any map

The water doesn’t know it’s making art
Drop by drop the cold teaches liquid to be solid

First, the edges crystallize
drawing curtains across rock face
Then columns grow downward,
stalactites of absolute clarity

The stream keeps flowing at the center,
carving channels through its own frozen body
hollowing blue chambers behind ice walls

Wind plays through these passages
No one hears the bass notes,
the pitch only ice can make

Each freeze adds layers
Each thaw subtracts
The sculpture changes nightly

Light finds its way through frozen water
Blue becoming bluer,
white beyond any naming
Sometimes the ice spans
the entire cliff,
every drop accounted for in crystal

Behind the main fall, smaller galleries form:
ice caves with ceilings of running water

The architecture follows only water’s logic
Where gravity pulls,
where cold catches,
where flow meets stillness

No principle but physics
No beauty but what happens
when water meets winter repeatedly

In March, when somewhere people say spring is coming,
the structure begins its slow collapse

Ice this thick dies gradually,
each section returning to motion

The sound would be tremendous:
tons of ice letting go,
crystal returning to current

But no one hears it
The mountain catches these notes
and keeps them

By May, water runs clear again,
no trace of winter’s architecture
Just rock and flow,
preparing for next winter’s construction

Which no one will see,
which needs no seeing

Made whole by cold’s solitary work,
dignified by absence