At 5.58
we were third
at the gate
to Sossuvlei
(that ivoried clay pan
with its sentry
titan dunes)
we’d outpaced the gloaming
third would hardly do
so we sped for first
overtook Messrs
Sunway Safaris
the first first bus
caught up with
the South African passat
which, tailgated, would yet not let
don’t blame the city slicks
these dunes too are whet
to slicing blades
whipped up to peaks
by grinding competition
between two winds
between the desert and
the deep blue sea
we raced home from the volcano
the all-day drizzle
cooling to graupel sheets
peeling off the windscreen
sheep and cows long since winter-barned
only stout shagged studs
watch us speed past
unperturbed by snow-blizz
patient for their turn
snowfall sundance
the gentrifying slips port side
(geography as semiotics)
where FOB and FAS once were matey
genteel lodging sidles up against F & B
free alongside ex-works
androgynes sip cocktails indoors
even as, just a slipway aft,
welding sparks fly
across the crisp dry dock
nature requires
no touch-up
no filter
iso 200
sooc
raw
coming through the gyre
Reykjavik reminds me of Ushuaia
just bigger
these two points
polar-glancing
the top tip
the tip toe
either or
gaze depending
Anjali is very competitive
chafes at second placing
i pretend she’s the reason
i’m pumping my paddle
past mid-life muscle ache
but i fear the photo gives my fight away
in the ice canyon
where we berth
whalers, oilers once thrived
drunk at the font of enterprise
harvesting fine cetacean fat
supping from the glacial slabs
till fire or foe sank their bones
to frigid stony graveyard
humans being one of a few
species that outlive their breeding years
another being whales
larry wonders if
this be to permit elders
transmit their wise to young
the tanker rearing
only bow above water
rutting, rotting rusting body
an undergirdle
for our craft
tells a seerer tale
the tern sky-dives for krill
the harpoon for the kill
the skua pries
the limpet dry
greed repeats
nor do we
stop our eyes
from our feast
mid-afternoon, we return north-west
squeezing through narrow Antartic Sound
named not for the Continent
but the first boat that slipped
between the tiny gap
that keeps our footprints
on east weddell secret
a while longer
after taking so many photos
i miss the one just outside my porthole
three penguins on an ice floe
dash madly
fleeing us
crossing bosphorus
At Piazza San Blas, there's still time to watch the vendors' set-up routine
(before later-rising tourists ascend from Cusco via the via)
woven woolens, leather packs, Santiago's pipes
and all manner of trinkets
a young Andean maiden endearingly brings her pet alpaca to market day
or so I think
only later to discover she is part of the photo mafia posing for pennies
it's disappointing
most incongruous yet is uncle selling granite chacanas
who breaks into whistle
i expect The Mission Morricone
pan-fluted
but hear, instead, Gloria
circa Brannigan, not Rutter
antipodal 2011 