Burning Bright
By Catherine Glavina
After Semyon Remezov, first cartographer of Siberia
The cartographer came to court and lay Siberia
at the Tsar’s feet. The emperor wanted the map
to speak, to tell him how his wealth might grow
from riches hidden in frozen fields or buried deep
beneath a bewilderment of snow.
The Tsar took the atlas to the light, gazed upon
a sun-lit space shaped with the flourish of an illustrator’s
hand. It looked like a child’s idea of fairy land.
He swam rivers shimmering blue in calligraphic loops
across the page, entered forests etched in green,
climbed a smudge of yellow marking a ravine, followed
breadcrumb trails where wolves were known to roam.
The Tsar skated over floes of ice on sickle lakes, prayed
at sacred burial mounds, delighted in opening the
fold-out plans of ink-drawn towns
he held a masterpiece
a map with rivers for coordinates, with
wildlife staring at starkly frozen steppes,
a cumulation of Siberia’s secrets:
he could feel the ice crystals on his face,
see his breath hanging in the air like smoke,
hear the sound of church bells drifting over glacial ice.
He turned another page, found fur and minerals,
imagined frost-tipped pelts of sable turning into
bars of gold. The distillation of the land’s allure
enraptured him. This was how Imperial rule would grow.
Shadows from the casing cast bars across the Emperor’s
coat. Its ochre silk began to glow. The cartographer
was staring at a tiger, its chest burning orange in the snow.
Catherine Glavina
Catherine is a retired teacher and university tutor specialising in early language and literacy. She was dedicated to promoting the enjoyment of reading to young children, especially poetry. Catherine is an emerging poet having recently completed poetry writing programmes with Oxford University and FISH Publishing. She particularly enjoys writing about the natural world. Plants, animals and a sense of place feature strongly in her poetry. Currently, she has work being recorded for broadcast with the Coventry Talking Newspaper, audio for blind and partially sighted listeners.
Photo credit: Jeff Meigs
Apricot Press 