for my frozen embryo

Now we share the same space, and I can tell her,
when she wakes, exchanges ice for light,
what she had been missing while she slept.
In the retelling, we’ll move together
through hallways and alcoves, traces of river,
snickle-ways and shortcuts and shrunken palaces,
cathedral and catacomb, cul-de-sac and cellar.
We’ll deck out the clothes-horse in the living room,
duck heads to enter. We’ll imagine together
how each frozen protrusion, ledge or lip
could be bench or couch or coffee table
or tiny bed. For now, just the dropping of water
as the guide whispers the gorgeous geological names
for every formation, star and spiral,
and we listen bewildered or overwhelmed or impatient
like children at school, longing for daylight
and I’ve already forgotten what I might tell her.
Except how long it took to make it here:
miles of glacier, moraine and tundra,
how slow it is on snow with all the kit.
The guide invites us to book the longer tour,
the one where you spend a whole night here,
hold hot water bottles in hammocks
hooked up to the walls, hammer nails for hours
to pierce the ice. How it is fun
but tedious; how the tourists chat,
play music, and drink; how they want to stay up,
protest an experience predicated on sleep.

 

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From Magma 95, Architecture

 

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