Here’s what she wrote. Rita Willaert/Flickr The National Science Foundation sent Jynne Dilling Martin to Antarctica this winter (the austral summer) as an artist-in-residence. Below are two poems she wrote from there. “Am Going South, Amundsen” An oil painting of a jaguar eating an emperor penguin is the start of a daydream in the Royal Society library. Nineteen ponies wedged in narrow wooden stalls sail south; they will soon go blind from miles of radiant snow, lap at volcanic ash for a last smack of salt, be shot and fed to dogs. For now they sway this way, sway that. The magnetic needle dips. Only afterwards we ask if it cost too much. Will this species be here tomorrow or not? says the scientist to her assembled team. The ponies eat oats in silence, the instruments keep ticking, the icy water washes on and off the deck. A bell abruptly rings a warning: oxidative stress, methane concentrations, too much heat. The dragonfish lays her pearlescent eggs beneath the ice and for ten months stands guard. The sea-stars sway this way, sway that. We all hope for the best. The adaptive might survive, the needy will not. Then again, the adaptive likely won’t either. Sorry we realized too late: we wipe reindeer hair from our eyes, the glaciated passages too dazzling to quite see clearly. To keep reading, click here. Visit link: Antarctica’s Poet-in-Residence ; ;Related ArticlesBill Nye Wants To Wage War on Anti-Science Politics, Make a Movie—And Save the Planet From AsteroidsAntarctic Sea Ice Increase is Because of Weather, Not ClimateFor the Birds (And the Bats) ;
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