The Sailor of the Ross Sea

Far away on the ice floes of the Ross Sea,
beneath the shadow of aeons of fallen snow,
in a blasting wind that had descended a thousand miles
to the sea from a pinnacle of green glass,
his beard was white with snow.
The sailor sat and ruddered his ship toward land.
His mind was full of barren speculations.
Too much time compelled him to contemplate
the limits of the Euclidean plane,
the origin on the surface of a sphere
or the intersection of parallel lines at infinity.
No life loomed anywhere green.
The coloration of the penguins only reflected the abysmal
oppositions of the season—
the hideous bleach that poured out on all things,
and the winter nights that pitched the ice floes
the color of deep sleep and ignorance.
Except for the awful moon that reminded him
of the wife he left two years ago to sail to this world,
there was only the ice to accompany him—
colder than any hard thought that had ever rattled in his mind,
this shining simplicity that left the heart baffled and alone.
So he sailed around the axis of the world and
sang a little song to whales
that swam around him some days:

"I sailed south to see the ice.
I sought with mouth and eyes a delight
greater than my life
or the seas of home.
And so I sail and roam
and drift among the floes
as I rudder ’round the pole
that tips the earth back and forth in glory.
And you, my friends, who swim here
who shudder in blubber and fear
cry with me in the lonely seas
and sing the glacier’s glee
that blew its frigid breath
so far to the center of me."


—Eric Nelson