Icebergs

I liked your poem. So much to think about and know and not know what to do or how to fix anything. It makes me sad to think I will never see an iceberg.

Thank you, Angela, for stopping and reading this poem. Lynn, I would like to say that this poem is just about floating H20 but as you know that's just the "tip of the iceberg." There are things we can do about this problem, though, both through political and prosumer action.

..
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We need to grab that which is disappearing before our very eyes. Excellent take on global warming, John. It is deadly hot here in south Alabama right now and I'd love to see an iceberg!

It is awesome yet curious!

It is said that faith can move mountains, which I believe but I am not so sure about this administration or the effects, butterfly or other wise on our nation.

At any rate, good poem

Hi John
I read that Bradbury story once and was really intrigued...and then forgot its reference.
Thank you for reminding me. It was a great read.
So was your poem.
All hail to Kathryn.

John, I have to thank you deeply for this dedication. I am thrilled and humbled.

I was reminded by several images as I read your lines:

One:

Your words: ."reach out my mouse claw
and taste its dripping
coldest of waters..."


I could see the character attempt to experience visceral life by tasting "its dripping coldest of waters" yet her lack of experience with anything real (she's never seen an iceberg save for one in a science website ......

and it reminded me of those women, who, like some of JD Salinger's characters, may casually look at themselves while not paying attention to everything around them, such as is the case in A Perfect Day for a Bananafish, where she looks at her fresh manicure, while the phone rings, and her husband has died.

Two:
Your lines:

"This was after I saw the president
who was finally not elected the president
but stayed butterfly effected vice president
in a film that won for him a golden statuette"

The irony is lost on the character but not on the reader, with the double entendre of 'the president who was finally not elected the president'

I see the ironist/narrrator forever lost in her world where she never directly experiences anything visceral, and while all around her, Rome burns, the ice shelf melts.

A superb poem, John.

--------

Bradbury's work is fantastic, and the butterfly effect in his story is such a superb metaphor and reality...not unlike a similar theory - the tipping point - .

Thanks again, my friend, for this excellent poem.

You may have inspired me to write something about global warming.

I will work on it.

I personally love icebergs - don't we all? And was fortunate to see them in person when we camped in Alaska. Such mammoth monuments of nature, fragile reminders of our delicate ecosystem, delicate even in its most gigantic creations.

We need to be very careful, very aware.

The poles are terrifying and evocative. Every year or so I re-read South by Shackleton, watch John Carpenter's remake of The Thing, flip through a coffee table book of photos of the Antarctic.
As I understand it tourist passage to those outer reaches of the earth costs from around 4,000 to 30,000 dollars.
I understand it completely as a dream of some urgency.

This was after I saw the president

who was finally not elected the president

and stayed butterfly effected vice president

in a film that won for him a golden statuette



These lines point us to the heart of the poem which is sort of a question: "What is authentic experience?" and that theme is echoed in the line : and reach out my mouse claw

and taste its dripping

coldest of waters

So the reality of experience depends on the reality of identity. I am not sure we can know - which is the most disturbing thing- which is the experience we are having - an experience of the world or an experience that is manufactured by the self.
We always manufacture experience in at least some ways. We drink the cold water and think: 'How delicious' . So the mind takes over the experience by evaluating it. "This is good, this is bad, this is .... and so on. It isn't just a silly parlor discussion for wimpy intellectuals. Its the root dilemma we face - as John puts it here so well.

I have to see an honest-to-God iceberg

from a real ship with my own eyes

But what is honest? And which eyes are your own? What makes the ship real? Is it real because I am on it thinking; "Ah this lovely ship."
Its no accident that John mentions the Titanic here - because that was the ultimate example of delusion and reality. "We are on an unsinkable ship." "We have nothing to fear from icebergs." How many went to the bottom struggling with the delusion? Some did - Perhaps those who played while the water lapped at their shoes. Was it an act of supreme courage or an act of supreme delusion.

"butterfly effected vice president"

:) I like that...I remember the story well....to me, it always made me think of the possibility that not one iota of this great creation can be changed without great repercussions.

So we must tread lightly on this earth.

Thank you for reading this, Quinn.

Faith, it´s blazing hot here in southern Spain as well. But that´s what not prompted me to write this poem, but rather Newsweek´s cover story this week on the multi billion dollar denial of global warming cottage industry, that has kept all efforts to get any kind of legislation passed in Congress stymied for over two decades.

Gracias Toni for dropping by and reading three poems of mine and connecting.

John, this administration is not going to move any ice mountains unless they produce a profit, nor sign any accords for reducing emissions, in Japan or anywhere else. The problem is that many scientists see exponential changes in certain areas at this point, and no longer can global warming be dismissed as ¨apocalyptic thinking.´ Believe me, not to long ago I wanted to deny it myself, because I´ve heard too many Chicken Little stories over the years, and I´m also a big fan of Michael Crichton, one of the biggest name ¨deniers¨of the phenomenon. But facts are facts, and we have to face them.

Fred, thank you for dropping by and appreciating my poem and saluting Kathryn. I´m not surprised you´ve read the Bradbury story, you seem one of our most erudite authors on Gather.

Great comment, Kathryn. You read this poem over the shoulder of the narrator, as I intended you to, understanding the irony and not confusing the ¨speaker¨with the author of the poem as an instant default move. You also showed the sort of talents of inhabiting a viewpoint that have made you one of the most distinctive first person fictional point of view authors on our writer´s blog. I second Fred´s motion: All hail Kathryn!

You understood this poem right, Yorgo. ¨Urgency¨is the operating subtext beneath the speaker´s self-absorbed monologue.

Nathan, you notice I´ve put ¨icebergs¨and ¨Titanic¨into several poems lately, from FREEZING IN PHANTASMAL LIGHT to SIX FAMILIARS ON THE ONCOLOGY WARD....
You are right. It is a symbol for me for our arrogance in the face of an impending disaster, just as Moby Dick drowning in the desert was in my poem BLUBBER AND CRUDE.
The speaker as doubting Thomas who must prove something´s real to himself goes with his ¨mouse claw¨of a hand from too much clicking. The more we simulate this world, the more we wish it were still ´real´in the old sense of verifiable through the senses....which we no longer trust anymore, because of what we know about consciousness. Does the unreality of our grip on reality give us the right to destroy our world--I think of the line that Eliot quoted from the Upanishads in The Wasteland, ¨I have become the Destroyer of Worlds¨? Thank you again for a comprehensive look at some of the motifs and strategies of this poem.

Cheri, you are so right. Everything is interrelated, and in that sense I have already ¨seen¨an iceberg, since in one way or another I am connected to their atoms. I love your last sentence. Thank you for commenting.

For those of you who are interested in reading the complete Ray Bradbury sci fi story, it can be found at the following link: http://www.scaryforkids.com/a-sound-of-thunder/

Bradbury´s prophetic tale bears almost no relation to the cheesy movie they made ¨based¨on it two years ago, except that the film-makers completely got the idea of the ¨butterfly effect¨wrong, as did the director of 2004´s The Butterfly Effect. Both of these films show how movies try to ´turbo charge´an idea with CGI and plot twists that was better left elegant and, well, scientific.

And the Newsweek cover story, Global Warming Is A Hoax*, The Truth About Denial, here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

I have to say I LOVE Gather. Not only do I get to read such great work as John has posted here, but I also have my understanding of the multiple layers and subtleties scaffolded by so many talented and insightful people.

For me, I mostly felt the urgency you conveyed, but in re-reading after Kathryn's and Nathan's comments, the irony, and questions about self and reality are recognizable.

Thanks John, for this fine work.

I offer no critique, but thanks. It was a joy to read.

A chilling global alarm
chilling to warming
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

John, this is magnificent and very timely. I attended a screening for Inconvenient Truth last year and have been watching the fast disappearance of those mightly floes on the news....it is scary!

I was gratified not only by the superb poem but also by the detailed explanation that led up to it. Your vast range of knowledge is one thing but the way you sense and make connections between such disparate pieces of culture is astonishing. I don't know how much work went into this effort, but I appreciate it deeply.

John, Like you I have never seen one in real life. But never has any iceberg I could imagine seemed so beautiful as through your poetic words. Thank You, now I too must see one.

Nice work. Really catches the sense of icebergs melting and your wanting to see and touch one. Me, too! I want to touch one.

I have the Newsweek issue and was about to pick it up the other day; this is a subject I have felt deeply about for a long time; it is so difficult to control, on the one hand, yet so easy. Recently, we made a number of improvements that Gore had suggested.

Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring has depressed me since I read it and saw a TV documentary on it. That was about 40 years ago.

Silent Spring is upon us. Maybe I'll theme that into what I write.

When we were in Alaska, we also saw glaciers. Right up there and touched them. They give you a feel for the delicate balance of life lived in such humongous proportions.

Having seen icebergs and touched glaciers gives me a real appreciation for the visceral quality of this poem, John, and for your images.

Icerbergs, like all of nature, stir our imagination.

When I was in Australia, I turned on the news and saw bergs floating from the South Pole...it is scary. The dimensions of our coastlines and cities, and what will become of our coastline is very scary, indeed.

I did not know Crichton was such a naysayer. He is a disbeliever in some respects of conventional science, for which I respect him. Crichton is a great storyteller but a so-so writer, who happened to have been born in one of the most famous of all 20th century writing families. I do know that because of knowledge I had been cousin-privy to.

John, your poem, Icebergs, is now Featured in The Renewed Activist.

Nice environmental piece. I share your desire to see an iceberg before they are all gone.

I love this poem, John. It's haunting and makes me feel the longing for ice. It's been a very hot summer here (upstate New York) where it's usually rather cool. It all reminds me of an old Outer Limits story where a man is dying of a fever. His family is fussing around him, and you find out the sun has come too close to the earth - and everything is melting - even the paint on the canvas in front of him. It's scary. Then finally the man's fever breaks and he wakes up and finds out it was all a dream. But the reality is, the sun has moved farther from the earth and everything is freezing. You can see the ice and snow crawling up the windows outside and everyone is shivering. Nature, the titanic mother and the fragile infant filled with possibility, all rolled into one.

Interesting comment by Stirling about the Outer Limits with its early echo of Icarus.

What a fascinating, chilling, masterfully sardonic social commentary locked up in a poem! The speaker hasn't a clue, really, of what's up, that the ship is sinking, he just wants to get a good peak at the iceberg. In a wonderfully innovative structure (one should always look for structure in any Walter poem!), we find a sonnet hidden at the outset in 14 superb lines, beginning with an unrhymed couplet, followed by 5, 4 and 3 strophes, with brilliant rhyming pairs: floes/shows/photos, repetitions of president and closing –ing words. The opening sonnet is a caricature of someone (ourselves) totally missing the point. I've seen the effects of global warming, but I haven't considered the ramifications of those effects. I've seen the icebergs falling off the caps, but I haven't considered in 30 years we'll have lost our beaches (or our beaches will be 50 miles inland, etc.). The illusion to Gore is further delusion. He saw him, noticed he made a film, won an award. But what he liked about his film was the beautiful icebergs, the beautiful white tips (a reference to purity.. aha!). After the sonnet, we find the narrator resolute in his decision: he must do it! But not heed the call, or the content or the data… he must go see the icebergs first hand. From a real ship with his own eyes (versus the virtual world) and reach out with his twisted fingers (aching from all the important online business and pleasure he's occupied his time) "and taste its dripping coldest of waters." Here a final reference to the effects of global warming even in the ideal thing which he would "make his own." Thus, the poem deals with the delusion and illusion and the ongoing denial of action. Rather, we would be content to focus on the dwindling emblems of beauty (and there are many) than take real, concerted and effective action against what is clearly one of the great challenges of our age: global warming.

Beautiful poem -- really creates the picture in the mind and makes people(?) see the problem of global warning in a different genre.

I won't even try to critique -- far better minds than mine have already done a great job. The poem moved me. Thank you.

There are so many interesting themes below the surface in this poem John, apart from the chilling main one of environment change and the fragile status of the world's latest endangered species - the iceberg.

One of these underlying themes is the quintessential dilemma that every serious writer must eventually face - whether to live life or to write of life by observing it from a distance?

Another theme is the role that chance plays in our lives, hence if not for a few hanging chads, the icebergs may have yet survived, just as in The Sound of Thunder the whole society changes drastically for the worse because of one butterfly. ( Isn't it a peculiar coincidence that a hanging chad resembles a broken wing of a butterfly?)

Funnily enough, earlier this week I recommended "The Sound of Thunder" to a Gather friend of mine - I think it is the best time-travel short story that there is.


"and reach out my mouse claw and taste its dripping coldest of waters"

This passage I find particularly evocative as the phrase "mouse claw" so vividly brings out the contrast between the magnitude of a person compared to the gargantuan dimensions of the iceberg.

Yes, this poem really made me experience the white, glacial purity of these serene giants of the seas and for now, unlike you John, that is as close as I personally want to get to an iceberg.

oooh the last stanza is my favorite! great imagery there. the times they are a changing. sad to think we will not see so much of the damage we are causing our children and our children's children. very profound poem. a big tenola from me.

Take a sip for me, John? Then another poem, please?

Your poem is the truth written in a fab fashion. I believe it would appeal to the masses that do not read poetry. Just a thought, a part of the solution?

Praise to you!

This sent shivers down my spine. The titanic, the 'white tips', etc.. all referential to ice slowly deteriorating with this present administration. There's more but it's been commented on repeatedly. I'll stop in my codeine cough syrup stupor and reread this sardonical masterpiece sober. :)

John, I am overwhelmed by this verse. I had the privilege of seeing glaciers a few years ago, including the Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau, Alaska. A recent photo I saw showed it had receded a frightening amount. Thank you for putting into words the sadness I felt as I looked at that image. We are wasting so many of God's magnificent creations in our foolishness!

Most apt commentary on a global issue, John. I just read Boris' article on what are the truths the collective consciouness is missing out on. Your poem and Boris' concerns, though of different natures, make me feel I am at the right place, among the right people, who do not just write pretty words but encourage us to look beyond those words. Make us look at what we are doing to our world, despite the wealth of information at our disposal.
Thank you, John, for bringing such issues here...and congratulations, Kathryn!
Or, 'Hail Kathryn! :)'

John,

I'm back to read again, a very worthwhile endeavor. But then your writings are always pleasing to me, not just because you are you - although that 's a plus!

Our Gather friend, Darcey D., from Down Under, has written a poem titled Ice Castles.

Say, were any of my books on your list/your books on my list? I'm going to check.

John, my friend, you have so elegantly said what is of deep concern to so many of us. One day, like you,

I have to see an honest-to-God iceberg

from a real ship with my own eyes

and reach out my mouse claw

and taste its dripping

coldest of waters

It's a beautiful poem. I've never seen an iceberg either, but I would like to. And a glacier. But I've finally seen California, and now I miss cornfields. :) "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

John,
first of all, great poem!!!
2nd, The story you mentioned, was a lesson in my school and I remember having a HUGE argument with my then teacher about "the ominous sound of thunder"... This brings back so many memories...
as for an iceberg, I would love to see one, and like you mention reach out my mouse claws and taste that water, if I can, before they melt away!!!
fantastic as always!!!

Wonderful poem. May the butterfly effect from your excellent writing have a positive effect on us all.

I read that people go to Newfoundland in summer just to watch the icebergs pass. That sounds like the ideal, contemplative retreat.

Pre-sim to the core. Ice Berg calls upon the powers of the internet and contemporary simulated experience as a tool of sensual enlightenment that allows the speaker to view and experience icebergs melting through the eyes of an eagle, using the "mouse claw" to grasp with critical life/death opportunity the qual of global warming.

I applaud your work, dear friend, and your dedication here to "Kathryn Esplin-Oleski, a wonderful journalist and story teller here on Gather.

Thank you, John, for this powerful and grabbing work of vision and leadership.

What I love here first is the self-effacing fluency of the poet. By the fifth line's end, "pho-tos" is surely a spondee, to rhyme bobbydylanlike with shows and floes.

The underassertion of meaning has been noted. I don't go to science web sites much, but I'm sure you're right, John, they are most likely to be "cracking ice shelves" powered by the chill of positivist dogma, though that's only a second reading of your intention.

Watching melting growing rising? So now do it! Yes, "experience is the best teacher," they used to say. Anything other than experience is what? A download of something else's simpering subhuman software.

I'd love to join you, John, on this jaunt. For the moment I'll have to "think the one who thought the iceberg," pondering those accidents that have "allowed life to develop" on this planet. Such as the season-making tilt of the axis, and the fact that water frozen so unexpectedly floats.

Really enjoyed your poem. Thanks for sharing

John, oh how I've missed your gentle surf of words upon the Gather waters during this busy summer. There are places that I want to see with the same ache you carry for icebergs: Thailand, Cambodia, India. Funny how a slice of geology can capture our hearts and imagination. Your poem has the coolest rhyme scheme, and when I read it out loud it sounds like the joyful scrape of one iceberg against another. Love it, as always. I'm so glad to be back on Gather.

The undefined subject immediately invites the reader's curiosity to participate in the questing posed at sea for a mass that has captivated the imagination from an imperiled threat they pose in Titanic movies (creating a reference to more than just the remake I believe, to the many films that have used the iceberg as the formidable an uncontrollable "enemy" in many films. The expansion of their popularized exposure on
nature shows and their impact and beauty mesmerizing many an eye with 'high-res photos"
evokes an allure that prompts a necessitation of attention. The event's sighting on the televised or photographed medium has baited a question that has been further impacted by the sardonic presidential sequence that taunts the "butterfly effect" of an election, manipulations creating a new and perhaps more influential impact for the loser, who ends up with a golden trophy for his media-saturated attention to the same pivotal concern. The "white tips", the surface allure of the physicality of the "image" has prompted the tease, with but a casual aside to the 'glaciers melting" and the storms' & seas' effected shifts as \afterthought and aside to the beauty . There is purposeful action incited by all of this information with the directive "I have" and the sense of foreboding time limitations on the quest's potential. The "heat" of the speaker's impassioned "need" maintains magnetized focus on the sensory tip's allure, evading the environmental call for change in human choices. It becomes like a trip to the zoo to see endangered animals,
But there is even more ownership of this quest in that the need is to "taste" the coldest waters that might pleasure the senses. One can only hope that the impact of that sip might elevate the consciousness beyond this moment.

This poem challenges and provokes and titillates in a most unusual way and leaves an uneasy feeling when we reflect how much we garner from third party visual exposures and rarely leave the screen to either physically experience the phenomenon or take on a pubic, involved stance in the issue beyond collecting the knowledge. At the end of this poem, I doubted that this speaker's journey would ever occur, but the fantasy was heightened to attain a full thrust of imaginative pleasure for the speaker. This is brilliant, John and I ask myself new questions, as always, after reading your provocative poetic prompts to review my own truths and influence.

john - magnificent poem, and anything with chaos theory, i am so in. i love that last part, the cold cold water. such imagery - WOW! thank you.

John, it's so beautiful to think of the icebergs floating. I'm inspired to go check out KEO's writing on this subject to see the inspiration behind this poem. One need not to go to the great expense and trouble of seeing an iceberg in person to see concrete proof of global warming. Glaciers our on U.S. mountain tops are also melting.

i happen to be watching 'an inconvient truth' as i read this...quite the coincidence. i can't wait for you to go see these beautiful yet quickly diminishing white masses and read the words you write about them after seeing them with your own eyes. so sad to see just how quickly these icebergs are melting in the world.

A great poem, John. There is a release of transcendent power in these words and images. Here are some themes which come to mind after reading your thrilling lines

"Ye ice falls! Ye that from the
mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope
amain--
Torrents, methinks, that heard a
mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their
maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts.

(from "Hymn Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
This verse precedes the third movement entitled "Landscape" from "Sinfonia Antartica" (Symphony #7) by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1952). This symphony recounts the tragic expedition to the South Pole by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1911/12. The orchestral scoring includes large orchestra, vibraphone, pianoforte, organ, celesta, glockenspiel, bells, wind-machine, women's chorus, and soprano soloist. We can feel the frozen wastes of the Antarctic and the mysterious poetry of this white vision at the ends of the earth. This story also was told in "The Last Place on Earth" by author Roland Huntford, made into a Mobil Masterpiece Theatre presentation recalling the great Amundsen and Scott race to the Pole during those years. Your poem echoes some of these profound images and the words which preface the second movement entitled "Scherzo."
"There go the ships, and there is that
Leviathan
Whom thou hast made to take his
pastime therein." (from Psalm 104)

I am reminded of the disastrous flight of the airship "Italia" in 1928 when General Umberto Nobile and his crew crashed upon the ice on their return voyage from the North Pole. Author Wilbur Cross recounts this harrowing journey in "Disaster at the Pole." The great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen is lost in a rescue attempt as this astonishing tale unfurls. The photographs alone are spellbinding, with the most incredible capture of polar detail and atmosphere as well as the human drama.

Another volume you bring to mind is "Dr. Eckener's Dream Machine: the Great Zeppelin and the Dawn of Air Travel" by author Douglas Botting. This recounts the amazing tale of the round-the-world journey of the German airship "Graf Zeppelin" in 1929 with 61 people and Dr. Hugo Eckener piloting this craft even over uncharted regions of Siberia, landing at Tokyo, flying over the Pacific, heading to San Francisco, Los Angeles and back to New Jersey, finally to home port at Friedrichshafen. "Fabelhaft (Fabulous)" said Dr. Eckener in an apt description of this 20,500 mile voyage of 21 days across the surface of the world. Your poem reflects the grand spaces of this contemplative adventure for a lifetime.

Finally, I come to a personal observation on the symphonies of the German composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896). I have never heard more evocative sounds from an orchestra than in Bruckner's 8th and 9th Symphonies. The Adagio from the 8th and several passages of the 9th rekindle the striking image of witnessing the melting of snow and icicles from rooftops and rocky promontories in my youth. I can never release that fleeting impression of nature's patience after a heavy snowfall. The hours of solid frozen shapes slowly disintegrating in the rising warmth of the sun, this is an image of profound beauty, divine grace, the unfolding drama of solids becoming liquid, something so transient yet poetic, the unwinding of that which seems solid but is not, the inevitable reduction of the elements to a point of disappearance. Bruckner's music mirrors these deep reflections perfectly in a sinuous yet massive manner. In the contemporary realm, the folk-rock group "The Byrds" also reflect these sentiments in the song "Change Is Now" on their 1967 album "The Notorious Byrd Brothers." This song by Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman echoes the idea that what may seem solid could actually be fleeting. Another primal image of ice and its destiny to perhaps evaporate before we are cognizant of its demise.

Thank you, John, for this masterful poem which elucidates many details of the present age, the previous age, and the possible age of our planet's future. Your have given us much to think about in a poem which does not fade with time but extends it toward perpetuity.

Verse that any common man can read and enjoy
With a message of importance to our earthly joy
I agree with the politics that you have deftly shown
And hope your trip to an iceberg causes no sorrow to your soul

John,

This piece, though serious in topic, left me smiling at the boyish joy written into its words, at the thought of really seeing an iceberg in person. I have had that dream many times. Though I do not personally believe in global warming, at least to the extent that Gore et al would have us believe, I do believe that the world is changing all the time, and many things will be lost along the way - perhaps even, life on this planet itself.

Your poem is brilliantly put together as always and I hope you get the chance to "touch" and "taste" the honest-to-God iceberg. Just make sure you use that mouse claw and NOT your tongue! ;)~

I just heard the sound of an Iceberg calving in my head. Once you see that happen with your own eyes and hear the thunder-like sound you never forget.

"Most bergs are calved from ice sheets off the western coast of Greenland and Antarctica. Icebergs are found in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions"

(source: http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/icebergs.htm)

Titanic Irony

We sat so tall aboard that ship, but pride preceded a fall. Yet, now it seems we'll laugh last, or perhaps when we move to gloat, instead of laughter we will choke, on those infamous greenhouse gases.

Steam and smoke, black exhaust of our hubris, came from that great titan, cast down and sunken. But while crashing and banging killed our ship, we furtively retaliated. Unbeknownst to us and it, those pillars of burning earth, that thick murky smog, were losing a battle but working to win the war.

When there's only water, and our boats span continents, we will navigate the seas, free from distraction, free to do our duty; free from those gelid giants, of phosphorescent beauty.

A wonderful poem for a charming lady...Icebergs!!! indeed the most suitable title...Rendered magically...After reading your poem, I was curious to see Kathryn's comments and I found her fabulous...

This is nice read John.I am to see glad that you The star is back..we missed you..

Other great poems for the icebergers among us: "Imaginary Icebergs," by Elizabeth Bishop, and "Sleeping On the Wing," by Frank O'Hara (I'm feeling very American today). But really, this is an excellent poem: contrast between depersonalized screenings of polar decay and the nearly unreachable tactile experience of - and I loved the final lines - the "mouse claw," was as sharp as you obviously wanted it.