Berglife
[2007-12-15]

animation: Lisa Roberts
Sydney 2007

An iceberg calves and turns,
it's tabular form castlelating:
my first iceberg weathering
currents of wind and sea.

A once dangerous growler
is melting.

Standing on the bridge of the ice breaker, Aurora Australis,
I drew my first ice berg.
I moved my pen across the page, marking the paper softly but surely.
I traced the motion of my eyes
along the rounded forms of the ice berg before me.
Looking at these lines now, I remember that first ice berg.
I drew as if for the first time, child-like.
Writing about this now,
I recall that first encounter with ice as physical and emotional.
It connected me unexpectedly with the moment of my mother's death.
As I strained my eyes through darkness and mist looking out to sea,
grief overtook me.
Then the feeling faded away
as I contemplated the ice berg's journey.

Iceberg

When frozen

Their shape is sharp

Jagged edges slicing.

Giant icebergs growing

In coldness of oceanic minds

Only tips emerge, the purity submerged

hollow jagged cathedrals of alabaster white

an ethereal blue entices lustre of buoyant mountains

Floating further from home, murmurs and temperature

hairline cracks, a spectre of majestic purity

fracturing and splintering, becoming

contextual representations.

Melting, deliquesce

Lost in lilac

Raw untamed

Thoughts contained

Within shapes, products

of the imagination, restricted

by the confines of language, words.

The true purity of unsubjected thought hidden.

Behind carefully deranged symbols and punctuation

Complete communication of pure thought is impossible.

The global warming of thoughts into language. Smoothing

Edges and creases into a homogenous disembodied

thought, now easily manipulated within the

confines of language. Single streams

of once pure thoughts, now

linear, unrecognisable.

A. A. Davies
Sydney, 2007