Antarctica
i.
was it only yesterday, the waves a crowd
waving olearia branches, soft sage and white veined,
throwing down the branches alleluia alleluia
the waves rinsing the gravel, sieving the stones,
testing them, weighing them, seeking
the heavy body, the light body,
the hens next door singing their lamentations
‘OH NO –no-no-no-no-no-NO-no-no-no-no’
ii.
the ice looks like leaf litter, like roughcast
on the walls of the kauri villa roughly worked up,
the dense blue shadow and white
of pressure ridges that meet like clenched fists
over a card table, clouds that replicate the ice
and vice versa, O constant mirror,
fantastical theatrics, an elegant display
of miniatures, human apparatus in a white cabinet
iii.
the snow is all chopped up in layered whitenesses,
smooth skin of the berg,
a wash and swirl like pressed steel in a ceiling,
a ship stuck fast in a milk bottle,
tent toggles tightened, two spongy black figures
just standing around,
this impulse to read the wilderness as domus
Note: domus (Latin) – home, dwelling
By Bernadette Hall
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Mix & Mash 2011 - Literature Remix Category http://www.mixandmash.org.nz/
