Ptolemy knew of a southern polar continent. Cook and Shackelton attempted separate conquests. Ships voyaged as early twentieth century probes amid frozen stellar s.p.a.ce nudging Earth's feet.

Footprints the size of muskets where left as evidence.

So were a few red flags. No oxygen bottles trailed the ascent like those that packed Everest. Amundsen as to Hillary across the South Sea face, yet this Matterhorn has a logic and bedevilment all her own.

Page 60 Norway and Russia claim exploration of her frigid body. The British in the first virginal thrust christened Queen Maud Land after a brilliant courtship. Shades of Spencer and his Faery Queen; the Kron Prins Olaf Coast, anyone?

Ice. South of the Antipodes. The floor of the world.

Magnificant pack to the drunken global jaw, growlers or submerged ice packs. A cold porterhouse steak to ward off the combattive edge, the chronic boxer's inflamed orifice and eye -- the nosebleed's staunchest friend.

Terra Australis Incognita, the supposed southern continent; hoof of the Cenotaur stringing men like a bow across nipples like raw wounds. clotted hair and blood on a precipice for a chest.

Page 61 BLUE*EYED GRa.s.sES

Rocky shale, pale voile, sun lighting the clearness of the bay; come Moccasin Flower or Gra.s.s Pink unto Painted Cup -- big with primula eye, these septs off wild and inland seas.

The delights of success and heartbreaks of failure among the people in the land below Tobermory; the rocks on the cold hill, the lilacs by the doors...

And it was at their expense that this land came to be supplied with vitriol, camomile and liquorice, yea some camphor and jallop, oft'times basil, lemon or rhubarb --- all sent from Glasgow in wooden boxes stout as pioneer hearts.

Page 62 MOCCASIN

Backwoods cabin, opera house from the pines awash with stars, skullduggery in place over spruce hills dredged to open revolt against invading plough -- where greenest leaves in a miser's hand part rotting gold bags all nugget strewn, step to step, with water speaking magic over the sound of countless woodland ducks.

Hocus-pacus, the flies are sleeves over the world, black granite pull-overs slung thru the air a twinkling of the eye invokes funeral trees, deerskin in colour, the rabbit in the hat behind rich birchbark racing thru the dark.

Page 63 THE BULLFROG

He sat with no more compunction than an eel fish big-faced, bloated, the complexion of a beehive -- a dragnet of emotions crammed into a tumbler upended in water.

His eyelids wore the effort of horseblinders, a spongy leather masquerading as torpedoes and I saw him lonely at the crossroads matted gra.s.s, a strip of wire, cold current chasing flecks about his person, then lunging green exploded into rapacity -- caressed the awaiting fly strewn stick with emerald mouth & coffers of appet.i.te.

Page 64 ANCESTRAL MEMORY

Patrician to my plebian, aristocratic leaning versus unbridled backwoods feeling -- distinct Old World breeding countering rudest colonial lean-to; his carca.s.s lay, roadworthy, blinking back cold starlight with all the forest as silent voyeur stretching for a look, black fur & quills in disarray like Crazy Horse's warpaint after the Big Horn, this roughneck Canadian porcupine shot clean with b.u.mper & chrome.

Then little hedge-pig quaint as porcelain china cup half a world away greeting pints of milk in an English doorway half his scalp torn thru dirty, British lorry choking fumes the petrol in its tank loose.

Page 65 ENTRY POINT

Ants colonized it -- huge abodes littered with the dead (leaves, sticks, the occasional granulated insect piled high, totemic-fashion) reaping a fortune in scenery, though probably not food Ojibways were next -- their tell-tale encampment by pocket-sized waterfall, inlets off a winding cataract & moss, loam-thick with black soil a future arboreal dream inching over rock, darling crevice for northern orchid, then kiss of red death the hybrid trillium & more sinister cousin, jack-in-the-pulpit for Indian foragers.

Animistic limestone shone hands, poked thru the forest with stealth, petroglyphic lava beds -- a cougar pouncing -- runic carvings the cold in the Giant's stone nostrils billowing off the lake like a presence.

Page 66 BLOODCOUNT

My mind had almost died.

It had refused a game of tag on a common with surly children and they steadfastly took revenge.

My fate like Blondin's walk across Niagara saw cataracts looming large, hiss & foam, then visions of serpents, farawy monsters & inner tension of rocks opening.

The churned, brown water opened like a basket before me.

Maurading bubbles took on elephantine shapes, my barrel creeked.

Faraway, the edge & drop yawned in indifferent harmony.

The brown walls of my fortress barrel became like palates & sutures of my skull imprisoning the brain; the trickle of invading water ever a reminder.

The close of the story?

Nothing. What is there to record after a river pa.s.ses?

What remains of things unseen, of antelopes in flight?

The shroud of Monte Cristo tossed carelessly into sea did not fall open to the touch but was knifed with rifle force.

Page 67 BLOODSTREAM

Camping out, a miraculous thing happened.

The kaleidoscope of vision was focused on a precipice, caught endangered water about to fall under microscopic attention.

Moisture was shortlived; so, too, congealed lava sheets & bedrock over which the water flowed.

The cabin in the distance seemed prisoner to mist while a rainbow gathered its wits for the next performance.

Nowhere did leaves intrude though a fly made headway up a gla.s.s pane embedded in wood like antidiluvian plants have been known to seek amber.

In their chorus, other flies droned then ran up & down the ledge.

In the iate sunshine of the day, a b.a.s.t.a.r.dized vision of dirt farmers, pioneers imprisoned in similar toil.

Page 68 ROGUE AND PRIVATEER

The Squirrel, a corsair, rides the wind black arm of a pressing sea,

Tribal hostilities finished, she slinks into port.

Traveling lightly across open ground, a squirrel upends a brigand sapling.