A Poem about Antarctica

I discovered a favorite book a few years ago called The Greenpeace Book of Antarctica: A New View of the Seventh Continent written (1988) by John May. It was the first thing to inspire me to learn more about Antarctica and wrote a poem about it! I hope you enjoy reading it:)

On the South Pole

Desert and cold

Comes icy coasts

Glistens with frost

Icy shores spurts

Release icebergs

To wander the Southern Ocean’s seas

Breaking, Drifting, and melting

They, so small, it’s large

So big, it’s gigantic

Ever as big

As city size

Vastness of white

Cold is the knight

Mirages hide

The right true side

There’re magic nights

Of charming sights

With million stars

And auroras

Blinking Sparkling

Moving Shining

When summer arrives

Revive again days of plentiful sunlight

Awakening lives on ~ under ice

And the from many flights and waters away welcomed

Algae, krills, seabirds, penguins, seals, whales

Visitors from the North

Of the Artic Terns

Such living wonders

Flying, swimming, racing, hunting, feeding, breeding, resting

On the shore, heading sea, on the cracked sheets of pack ice masses float

Summer nor winter, this eternal coldness stays

Midnight sun

Rising over the white mass

Starting in October oh fruitful summer

Are the bright old days in the South

But the North’s destined another

Of dark cold season

Taste the summer of it

You’ll understand the winter of it

Orbiting keeps going

If you’ll go on with me

I will tell you of...

Six winter months

Of Sun watching us near the horizon

A few weeks consumed by the darkest sky

When Days and Nights are one

Memorable fearful force

Of the seasonal Katabatic winds

Stirred the majestic

Find the emperor penguins

Reuniting old lovers

In the bitter melancholic windy air of winter

Caring for a family together

Responsibilities for two

Saying goodbye to reunite again next summer

Winter oh winter

Winter for the Emperor penguins

These winter nights

Crowded stars illuminate the sky

Performing a still show

of the luminous Milky Way

Arches across the sky

The Constellations and Nebula

All which you can see just as you are

On the land of the South magnetic pole

The Antarctica remains bold

Exhibiting its white gold

Seaward against the awe-inspiring sometimes monotonous-looking wintry landscape

There the cracked sheets of pack ice masses float

However Frigid or bland

Its coasts and seas inhabit a rich life

Of seabirds, penguins, seals, whales

Krill, fish, isopods, corals, sponges

Though a limited list of flora

lichens, mosses, algae, liverworts

and more if you can know

The unnerving superlatives of the extraordinary Antarctica

Coldest, highest, driest, windiest

Such uniqueness makes it the greatest

Or harshest

This largest polar desert

Lies well at the bottom of the world

Owning its independence to none

Rugged mountains distribute across the landscape

Laying side by side like companions

Under a blanket of glacial ice

Exposing its rocky peaks

What a dramatic brightest white

To send so much sunlight back into space

Hey we go...

Welcome the Dry Valley

To taste another side of the same boundary

Landing on some soil finally

The moisture-less and brown colored land

What could’ve eaten all the ice

Across the field and upland valleys

Oh the name so fits to be

The charm of the dry valley