Testimony of one of Sir John Franklin's Officers. Poems I've written #6

 

Testimony of One of Sir John Franklin’s Officers.

 

When I was a child I was promised the ocean:
a trip to the coast, so we rode down to Hastings.
The clouds sagged like a dirty tarpaulin. 
The waves rattled the shingle. The sun 
bradawled a hole though drifting grays
to spotlight the place where sea became sky.

Nanny’s screams were baffled by the wind
but shifting pebbles under stubby legs 
betrayed me to strong hands before the water’s edge. 
Not safe, not saved, restrained. Returned 
to Nanny where I howled. Her voice: 
You big girl’s blouse: big boys don’t cry.

I have forgotten much; first this, first that;
things I should remember. But I do not forget
the sea and the sky and the line where they met;
or that need to stand where the light fell
and peer over the edge of the world. 

 

Franklin and his quest for the North West Passage fascinated me for years. At one time I was seriously considering following his first overland trip down the Coppermine river to the Arctic Ocean.  I began writing a version of the story which I never finished. This surviving piece, which is obviously fictitious, was published in an Anthology of Australian poetry by Bonfire books.