Snow Globe
after Encounters at the End of the World by Werner Herzog With booms & chirrs seals speak under the ice of an ocean frozen over. Stationary ocean. Electrified song. Color: snow day with autumn leaves inside it, glassene sheers of cantaloupe & kiwi on lavender, gunmetal, jetwing— When you rode the elephant through the puncture, the first syllable of my name parted the deep with your beautiful hand. Sparrow shuddered in her dustbath, swath of pleasure raked up & out. This is where I sat in the avalanche. In winter, where I was born, you pulled a cord of silk in your beautiful hand. I heard nothing under the ice. Bye bye now, our people would say. Bye bye later. First, song, a detonation— then white everywhere.
Credit
Copyright © 2014 by Kathy Fagan. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on January 17, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
About this Poem
"In my imperfect recollection Herzog’s brilliant film, Antarctica is a still and silent world where scientists press their ears to the ice for music from the seals below. The loneliness of that image, like a memory of intimacy, chilled and muffled, was one I felt the need to shake."
—Kathy Fagan
Date Published
01/17/2014