More Pictures of Antarctica and Poems by Ron Smith

By Aimee Levitt

Jan 20, 2010 at 9:40 am

It's unfortunate that we don't have enough space in our dead-tree edition to publish more photos and poetry by the subject of this week's feature, "Poetry in a Cold Climate: Ron Smith found his muse in Antarctica's vast icy wilderness."

Smith is a colonel in the Air Force who, during his twelve-year posting in Antarctica, produced several hundred poems.

click to enlarge

Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation

Penguins around a C-130 Hercules cargo plane in Antarctica. Note the retractable skis, used for taking off and landing on the snow.

Fortunately, space online, as in Antarctica, is nearly infinite. (Or at least appears so.) Here are a few more of Smith's poems and photos. You can find even more -- including some about places other than Antarctica -- on Smith's website.

Photo courtesy of the National Science Foundation

Antarctica's Deep

Gaunt desert guardian
seized winter's gate,
talon-stung the rarefied
air; leapt leagues of
cold sand,
suffocated time,
left leptons for
paragon plunder
of a universe
that used to be;

a wilderness-weir
amassed in light--
unsullied science of
neutrino-nothings
to beacon cosmos;
its chalice before me,
beauty's chaste
beatitude,
so beyond,
so benumbed,
so before
me.

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Aimee Levitt

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