Claire Beynon is the winner of the inaugural McMurdo Station Poetry Contest.
Thin Ice
Step out
onto white
not as a body
bearing any weight
but as a feather
might.
Think
of ink
in a quill
drawing a cantata
out of
light.
Flag Lullaby
- November 2005, Explorer’s Cove, New Harbor.
The wind is visiting
New Harbor
for once the chill
and light of midnight
bow down
and listen.
We shelter
inside the Jamesway.
Outside, five flags
are live skins
shocked into action
by some ancient
command. They brace
themselves and beat
like drums that thrum
and thrum
and thrum until sleep
overcomes.
Claire Beynon spent October and November 2005 as part of a team of researchers at Explorers Cove, New Harbor, and wrote these poems there after a precarious end-of-season walk in front of the camp where the pack ice was beginning to thaw. She lives in South Africa and New Zealand.
Image: Late Season Sea Ice, Bob Champoux
Fri 10 Feb 2006