North Pole by Allison Webb
A guest on our North Pole 2010 expedition was so moved by her experience, she was inspired to write a poem about it. We thank Allison Webb for sharing it with us.
I watched a silent, silvered midnight bear
Shamble softly from nowhere to nowhere.
And as he went -- a brief and casual pause --
Sandbag a seal with one slammed right-hand hook,
And saunter on alone from nowhere to nowhere,
Trailing the tattered trivial black remains.
He disappeared behind a pressure ridge.
Vanished, then become
A speck absorbed invisibly inside the huge expanse
Of slowly swaying frozen sea,
An interlocking tessalated matrix
Of azure-margined sussurating
Pure white plates, whispering endlessly
Across horizons. Sighing into the edges
Of the curving earth.
No night, no day, no home, no faraway,
No near.
Just simple, understated, trembling, fragile, void.