By Paul Bryers, August 28, 2025

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When the Ice Weeps

The Arctic weeps in silence, its frozen crown undone.

White sheets that held the ages melt beneath the sun.

A polar bear drifts, hollow-eyed, on a raft too small to save, while shadows of the walrus fall into a rising grave.

The sea drinks what is vanishing, blue swallowing the white, and children yet unborn will ask why we did not fight.

The North once sang of stillness,
of cold eternal night – now it cries with breaking voices, slipping out of sight.

And well they might. In shame we hang our heads.

There is no second chance, there is only desolation.