Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Sport 33: Spring 2005

The Ponies

page 38

The Ponies

It's a big surprise when Jofe tells us
that he's heading off tomorrow, so today's
the day he's all set to make a snow cave.

Jofe's a surveyor. He's already found
the perfect spot, right there in front of Erebus.
He asks us if we'd like to give him a hand.

Sure.

We stomp out with saws. We cut big square
blocks out of the glacial flow we're standing on.
The blocks are light, just water bubbles looped
with air, easy to cut and easy to carry.

I spend far too much time, of course, smoothing
one small face to perfection. But that's what I'm like,
always trying to write the next poem.

The others just get on with it.

Four white walls and a white arched roof rise
in the white desert. The sun melts the outer surface
to a smooth slurry, the wind freezes it. Frozen water,
frozen air. Jofe says it will last for years.

Now it's time to open it up, cut a wee door
in one wall, snake in, drag out one by one the pile
of green sleeping bags that make up the scaffolding.
Jofe dives in like a meerkat, kicks up buckets of slush.

Then it's up to us. It's a bit like blowing an egg.

page 39

We have to take turns lying fat on our backs,
chipping away with a short-handled shovel the dry
white fluff that packs the middle, hacking it back till blue
light shudders in the roof and Jofe shouts 'enough!'

Then we all squish in laughing ourselves silly.

That's when the blizzard struck. Now it's white-out.
Our faces grow black from burning blubber, our eyes
weep, our lips split. Jofe says we have to keep calm,
keep on talking to each other. Our rations run low.

Outside, the ponies lying dead in the snow.