POEMS From Interpretive Work
From Ice-Blink
Uncollected
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Polar Explorer # 10
Frank Hurley, Photographer on
Shackleton's Endurance
Expedition—1915
One by one he lay the glass negatives on ice
and squinted through their reversals. This one,
saved aside to be soldered into its tin box.
This one, smashed on the hard, white ground,
misgivings and reconsiderations
scattered and winking.
Yesterday, he'd broken into the cracking hull,
plunged shirtless into the slushy hold and fished out
what he could, heaved it up
onto the ice as Shackleton
tossed a gold watch, gold lighter, gold coins
onto the fissured surface before the makeshift camp,
telling the men they could take only two pounds
of unnecessary attachment from here. All of them
left something behind. But there, on the ground
that clenched and crushed their ship, they declared
what mattered most: silver nitrate
 lyrics, spoken light.
He made shards
of some 400 plates then packed a few reels of motion
film, prints already made, and the 120 negatives left unbroken.
His to trudge and huddle with on the ice shelf (157 days), to stuff
into the dory's pitching bow (6 days), to wait with
for rescue on Elephant Island (138 days). I don't know
how much the bulk of what he left
—broken glass, lenses, bellows stand,
plate still camera, tripods—on the ice
weighed or how heavy were the things saved.
He filmed the ship breaking, left the Prestwich No. 5
in its stand, slipped a small Kodak into his pocket
with thirty eight more chances to curate what history
would be made in the unmapped time before him.
Has there ever been a better measure
of hope's precise and illogical weight?
—first published in The Anchorage Daily News
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