Cioppino

I should have blogged about the delicious cioppino I made this week, the bread, the crawfish whose stock was the base for the cioppino... but there has been no time elapsed between last Sunday and today, the whole week telescoped most weirdly. I found a bird's nest abandoned with one lonely egg in it so it is now gracing my collection, complete with thistledown wisps from Suscipe and a lot of scrabbling earwigs I should never have brought inside. My grandfather Rose teased me with earwigs and I mistrust them heartily.

Loving the Voyage of the Narwhal - so far. It reminds me of the last C.S. Lewis Lion Witch and Wardrobe book, what's it called... and of course His Dark Materials. And the Ancient Mariner. There's a poem about icebergs too, end "that intolerable street" so I shall Google.

And here it is - the Ice Cart:
Perched on my city office-stool,
I watched with envy, while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice. . . .
And I was wandering in a trice,
Far from the grey and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street,
O'er a sapphire berg and emerald floe,
Beneath the still, cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night,
Bewildered by the queer half-light,
Until I stumbled, unawares,
Upon a creek where big white bears
Plunged headlong down with flourished heels
And floundered after shining seals
Through shivering seas of blinding blue.
And as I watched them, ere I knew,
I'd stripped, and I was swimming too,
Among the seal-pack, young and hale,
And thrusting on with threshing tail,
With twist and twirl and sudden leap
Through crackling ice and salty deep --
Diving and doubling with my kind,
Until, at last, we left behind
Those big, white, blundering bulks of death,
And lay, at length, with panting breath
Upon a far untravelled floe,
Beneath a gentle drift of snow --
Snow drifting gently, fine and white,
Out of the endless Polar night,
Falling and falling evermore
Upon that far untravelled shore,
Till I was buried fathoms deep
Beneath the cold white drifting sleep --
Sleep drifting deep,
Deep drifting sleep. . . .

The carter cracked a sudden whip:
I clutched my stool with startled grip.
Awakening to the grimy heat
Of that intolerable street.

-- Wilfred Gibson