Crackling Morning

I opened the door the morning after the ice storm,
expecting the quiet of a winter landscape.

The wind was calm, and though overcast,
it was not raining.

But my ears were greeted with a crackling sound,
quite unexpected -
as if the world was speaking
a new language
that I didn't understand.

The air was warmer,
and the melting ice was moving, shifting,
cracking and popping.

The only place I've heard that sound before
was on a glacier in Alaska.

I walked on, through the landscape -
sound bubbling all around me -
drops dripping, like rain, from the melting ice
on the trees overhead.