Outpost
Lindsay Pope (IIML, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
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March, 1941.
The coast is a scribble. Stars are stored in a wooden box on my shelf. It is more black than white here. Like algebra but colder.
The hut’s walls are a ghetto of mice. Those I catch become whiskers of smoke in the firebox.
I attend to the scratching radio.
This is not my dream.
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July, 1942.
The short days are long here. Morse code stutters in my aerial.
Every door of the home of the wind has been thrown open. An albatross turns the world on a dip of its wing. It has learnt the axioms of the air.
Mice crawl in the pockets of my sleep.
I wake, clutching a stick of chalk. Each day a tally mark.
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December, 1943.
The mice have all but disappeared.
Clouds, black as slate, are heavy with names. They fall upon roof clutching ash.
On short wave the radio coughs all night long.
I have lost the frequency.
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Lindsay Pope is currently studying creative writing at IIML, Victoria University of Wellington. His current work is informed by the human history of New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.
