The Frozen Sea
I sit by the thick glass
and draw aside the pseudo-lace
curtain, an unexpected
old-world touch. Stars
and ice. I have my own thoughts
on both, and like being near them.
No one else needs the bed, no one else
gets sick as winter passes.
And my presence, says the doc, is a jinx.
Why was I out there? How did the engine,
GPS and radio all fail
at once? My explanations
are inadequate; I say I was out for stars.
I was lucky: the hand beneath
the bandage has stopped itching.
In spring I’ll be flown out, and given
a better prosthetic foot.
Then there will be questions, but for the moment
the doc hazards
a neurological diagnosis.
I may be a jinx, but they come
obsessively. Show up once, then
stay away, alarmed
and disgusted, afraid of being
somehow compromised, then helplessly visit again.
They ask if and when (trying not
to say “if”) I intend to return
to work. I say I know
enough, now. Whatever data might show.
I say I have the stars, and try to show
them the stars, and cure the illusion
that they’re receding. But I also
assure them I’ve had no
revelation, that there is
no mystical knowledge. That knowledge
is what *they – bright, gormless,
depthless, straight-ahead,
easily discombobulated – have;
my state-of-the-art-professional dears,
my brothers. That I love
nothing and no one
else. The doc warns me
not to become too
excited. I don’t. They bring me –
I’m more of an outsider now
than the shrink – their little problems.
I pity significant others, strained
by distance (though I laugh privately:
what do they know of distance?).
Affairs, unformulable doubts,
memories, or just the zero-Kelvin night.
(I tell them it’s warm.) And larger
concerns: the sub-glacial sinkholes,
expanding thermals under vanished ozone.
The sickly plankton, blind seals,
the penguin mummies on the ice. The crack
that will swallow us
come spring. I heard it booming, I tell them, when
I was out there. Smelled the all-destroying wind,
the pestilent breath of normals.
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