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Kim Morrissey

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Franklin's Progress

for Sudeep Sen

Kim Morrissey reading Franklin's Progress 1867.1 KB
Play - Right click here and select save to download the audio file.

 

In school we all knew where we belonged
we belonged to the pink bits on the map
The Commonwealth.
Common     Wealth
it was our duty to share

British, of course,
although everyone knew
we weren’t.

At the Science Museum, I long for the old days
when the brontosaurus herds moved
through the landscape
like middle-aged geisha girls
bulimic giraffes

These days scientists tell us
they do not exist. Their bones are
labelled something else.

I remember Dominion Day Dances and
The Search for the North West Passage
my friend crying for plucky Franklin and his crew
who were lost, no one knew where or how
(no one thought to ask local people)
you see the English dilemma —
why ask anyone who lives on the land
how to survive?

These days we all know the end of the story.
Franklin’s Passage didn’t exist. His men
found poisoned by their own tinned goods
frozen politely in their best English Wool
queueing for Spring.

These days my closest friends
still belong to the bright pink bits
we remember. Only the names have changed.

We still live in a world worshipping science
and though the herds of Brontosaurus do not exist,
The Inuit do, and the once almost impossible
Northwest Passage, with global warming
grows greater every year.

Page(s) 294-295

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