David Atkinson: Two Poems

The Ablation of Time

At close range the clash

of a cloudburst lapses

in an instant.

Trussed up like bulging penguins,

we huff, our breath freezing on our faces.

Belittled as krill by the blue bolt glacier,

one mile wide,

as it enters the ocean.

Novice glaciologists analyse the rifts

and the stretched crevasses,

cavities in the body of serrated ice

held only by tensile strength.

The crowd murmurs, anticipates the spectacle,

the sonorous drumfire, of ice ablation.

An observer predicts, with conviction,

that any minute a precarious slab, angular,

will break loose and collapse.

Ecstasy for the enthusiasts.

An hour later, spectators grow listless.

It seems that, with debutant reluctance, ice calves

not to the minute but to the chronicle

of the ages.

                           David Atkinson

Masked Memory

For Kathleen (1920–1968)

To catch the idea of air

in the January heat,

we children escape to the verandah.

Enclosed by wire gauze, a safe

to banish the mosquitos.

The country night hums

a cricket sonata.

My cough hacks the stillness,

I wheeze from the oat dust;

a child should not lark

in the grain silo.

You perch on my bunk,

cradle my head,

your voice solfa soft.

You understand shortness of breath,

you say.

My memory specific; the tube is a link,

a line to the tank

and the oxygen mask stretches

across your face,

pallid-pale on the pillow.

                  David Atkinson