The Search Of The Edge Of The Ice Poem by Andrew C P Carnegie

The Search to Find the Edge of the Ice

They say moss doesn't gather on a stone rolling, in motion,
And even wise algae gets left in the wake,
Of a proud ship, foresail dipped, rising upon an ocean,
Yet what of the movement of cold, blued, polar ice,
Where humanity has no known device,
That can truly assess each crevasse like a human eye,
Not wafting past, digitising from way up high,
But the eye picking out subtle changes,
The sense of touch, of feeling crumbling, matters much,
And no satellite can be quite right as the human nose,
Smelling fauna, or the stench of rotting, dead plants or fish,
For ice recedes its movement gathers stones,
But it reveals things, that satellites alone,
Can never bring to assess, without assumption in that process,
And so a legend of arctic exploration abandons long treks,
Or climbing mountains, and not due to getting older,
Indeed using boats for a landlubber is getting bolder,
Taking stock of the after shock,
The Northwest passage laid out, like a virgin on a wedding night,
Internally sobbing for the state our world is in,
For there was no ice, not even enough for a consoling gin,
The long march of humanity's future discontent,
Requires assessment, a global response to a new war cry,
Come Europe, Come China, Come India, Come America,
Come hear the cry of the Canadian northwest,
Of the fears of Greenland becoming a new forest,
Come Australasia, Russia too, come all countries, much to do,
For we must rise to assess the circumstance of the ice regress,
To prevent surprise, loss of our world's bequest,
And pushing forward the advance guard of this new challenge,
Is Sir David's team, the polar ocean phalanx,
Not sat around at home in comfy armchairs,
But doing something, going somewhere, to show we care,
Seeking to find and monitor and report back,
Crucial knowledge that currently we lack,
For how can we plan to avoid our worlds future sorrows,
If we do not make an effort to find out for our tomorrow,
Where exactly is the edge of the ice, which today no device,
Can show in a way that all of human kind can know,
Does the ice recede or simply ebb and flow,
Stand up, man up, pay up, support them,
Lets see them depart and sail,
To find this century's holy grail,
The search to find ‘The Edge of the Ice'.

@Andrew Carnegie, Challenged in Wiltshire, Jan 12th 2017.