Pursuit by Elizabeth Bradfield

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 3, 2016   Pursuit   Elizabeth Bradfield

for Arctic Explorer Donald B. MacMillan Provincetown, September   All summer, town kids pose at the edge of the pier named after you   and leap. I’ve just flown home from Baffin, Mac. A month of spotting polar bears,   lecturing on tundra as raw wind shrugged us off, then winter chased us down the coast.   But it’s still season here, and so I’m at the gangway loading a boat to look for whales.    Boys dash between pickups. Girls strut the edge, do the same. No one throws coins for them,   but I know you jumped for the bright glint tourists threw, and (I’m sure) for the thrill   of being watched do it. These kids leap to break the hot September days and because tonight   they might find themselves midair, recorded by some out-of-towner’s gadget and posted online   for view-count and comment, their currency. Would I have strutted, have jumped at their age, yours then? I can’t decide.   At high tide, their knees are eye level from my place on the finger pier. One girl wears a silver bikini.    It shines like ice on the horizon. I can’t help but stare. Suddenly, I see it is desire   that links us, that galvanizes the thin substance of our ambitions.            Copyright © 2016 Elizabeth Bradfield. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Donald B. MacMillan was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1874. He ended up dedicating his life to the study of the North (Arctic Canada and Greenland in particular). The first to bring color and motion film to the Arctic, MacMillan traveled in a period of rapid technological change. Because of all this, he fascinates me, and I find myself thinking often of the parallels of our lives and, maybe more importantly, the differences between them—gender and sexuality and historic moment. My investigation is building slowly...” —Elizabeth Bradfield   Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Once Removed (Persea Books, 2015). She works as a naturalist on expedition ships, teaches at Brandeis University, and lives on Cape Cod. Poetry by Bradfield   Once Removed (Persea Books, 2015) "A Grave" by Marianne Moore "Continuity" by A. R. Ammons "The Wind Sleepers" by H. D. Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038