Yes, I like disaster movies too, especially ones where something's about to
wipe out all life on Earth. As Max says, this has a fine dramatic resonance.
Neat!
2009/11/2 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
> 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.
>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
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