No Disposals

Peter Olds

I Might Go to Adelaide One Day

I love the word 'south'
South Australia
Wild South South Dunedin
South Island
'Down South'.

The South Pole
Southland
South where Scott and Oates went
& never returned,
their tiny bodies ground to glass
under millions of tons of ice and howling
gales—like sand on
St Kilda Beach.
South of the South Pole.

The back of grandma's place
where the bantams scratch for grubs.
Beyond Invercargill and Campbell Island
where shipwrecked 19th c. sealers lived
on seagulls and dressed in sealskins
for two years, till they were rescued by
the crew of a scientific ship doing
research on weather patterns & the habits
of sealice.