John Gillies

Driving to meet you at the airport, I recall
the expedition that set out from Punta Arenas
and headed south, drawn on a thread of sound -
the thousand-mile-distant groaning of the ice.
Their mission: to capture "un iceberg" (no word
exists in Spanish, strangely) - and to tow it
the length of the Atlantic to Seville -
the centrepiece of Chile's contribution
to Expo '92. My expedition's
no less ambitious. Will you melt before
we reach the contraflow at Junction Twelve?