Deborah Meadows
From TRAVELLIT
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think about a frozen outpost,
people with burdensome exile,
entrenched hierarchy, petty
pecking order
an office-seeker
inadequate for more
than commentary,
trade route, impatience for gold,
for annihilating control
not a cordial Somewhere
to express (dare I say it?)
one’s intellectual gifts
anchor-buttons
officers wear,
envy of all
never thought to ask
distance to be covered:
well up from outer regions,
blood-enriched gods
tribute given
tribute taken
no puzzle about
meaning:
round stone
flat stone
trouble under tongue
accidental sounds
(extra stuff,
rest . . . )
amongst destinations,
destiny
stint
no babble
for diplomat,
but compilation
standard weights and
measures
one nation, central;
other, a minor phrase
near sea serpents
which corner the map
“. . . It is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a seaman, when he depicted his more terrible moments of suffering and despair. For the bright side of the painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. Such visions or desires—for they amounted to desires—are common, I have since been assured, to the whole numerous race of the melancholy among men—at the time of which I speak I regarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which I felt myself in a measure bound to fulfill.”
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Edgar Allan Poe
literacy driving an expedition,
graduated details of coastline
and passage
—found frozen a century
and a half later
Terror
messages left
in stone cairns
for search parties
captain’s log:
ponderous prose,
euphemistic observations,
desirous:
reception as serious, aristocratic,
scientific, flat
travel literature:
things there?
or provincial Self?
travel, as leisure and
pleasure, comes after
exploratory work,
after literacy,
after adventure,
after itinerancy,
after food-gathering
kept a close watch
a journal
the change
bits of seahorse
sea legs and weightlessness
point of origin (theorized
segment)
summer fruit or land
crossing
bundle or baggage
of amniotic water
a naming
to cease
investigation
they will decide
no going back
on broken shell,
cinder afloat
over roof
notoriety,
note struck
hammered steel
filling out the map,
book of records
a monopoly on samples
programmed for unity
(or trinity)
botanical sketches
and of “natives”
select most typical
beautiful
sizeable
fragments of shell
do not an egg make?
unduly
could come home
in a blaze of glory
first sailed into Admiralty Bay
on a wind-swept day
in late November 1819 (or 1989)
and made a landing
deep in the interior . . .
time to measure
glacial movement
from a shoal
of conventional prompts
lower boat from anchorage,
wend way to
tie it off
level transit
on fixed plane:
an impossible
academic frame
based on this story,
decisions are made
measure extinct volcano
national interest
in polar “research”
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised . . .”
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World
skeleton in stern of dory
men and dogs pull sleds
barely held together
with language
charged with uncovering
the disaster, construe
boatmen haul the vessel
by rope, often working
all day in wet clothes
at near freezing
temperatures
(barefoot)
use of Royal Society instruments
to float progress
“. . . a conspicuous lop-stick, a kind of landmark . . . its use in pointing out the frequented routes. It is a pine-tree divested of its lower branches, and having only a small tuft at the top remaining. This operation is usually performed at the instance of some individual emulous of fame. He treats his companions with rum, and they in return, strip the tree of its branches, and ever after designate it by his name.”
The Adventures of Sir John Franklin by Sir John Franklin,
1859
century and a half later:
ice-strengthened hull
painted red to distinguish it
from ice floes
whistles and bells
to mark each watch
replaced by telephones
bronze to copper again.
Date of composition: 1995
Revised 2005
Deborah Meadows teaches in the Liberal Studies department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She has lived with her lover Howard Stover in Pasadena, California since 1986. Her works of poetry include: Representing Absence (Green Integer, 2004), Itinerant Men (Krupskaya, 2004), and two chapbooks from Tinfish Press, Growing Still (2005) and “The 60’s and 70’s: from The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby-Dick” (2003). Several of her literary essays have been published in Jacket, Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics, New Review of Literature, and How2.
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