Simon Normanton

In films made you the viewer and I, or I in these and other adventures,

have ridden the windblown pampas; leapt the night through with the Dinka,
arms high as the horns of cattle;
soared with Condors above the Andes; run with wolves in the Rockies;
sled-hauled to the North Pole;
made pilgrimage to the temples of Badrinath, Kedarnath and Gangotri.
​ have attacked at dawn with the Gurkhas, artillery whispering overhead;
slept under a spray of stars with the Touareg, camels gurgling in the dark;
descended with the monks of Ganden to Lhosar in Lhasa;
debated with turbaned Afghans by lamplight beyond the Hindu Kush;
threaded up steamy rivers in the Amazon;
passed through the dividing pardha at prayers in the Great Mosque of Isfahan;
descended the Niger to Timbuktu;
meditated on the Ghats of Benares;
dived to the Titanic; swum with ‘mermaids’;
​ have heard the moan of whales in the Sound; the howl of monkeys;
the cry of loons; the breath of wolves;
seen the Gaumukh calve;
found the Maya, the Lost Dragon, Gilbert White, the Coast Wolf;
​ have been awed by the chant of the Rais as the sea turned red with blood;
by the dread Ogungun as the night throbbed with drums;
by the roar of Harriers lifting above the canopy;
by the sweep of the Himalayas hanging above the clouds;
by the shimmering desert; by the tumbled sea ice;
have hissed through snow tunnels in the slipstream of dogs;
dozed to the crackle of small arms in Jolo;
surveyed with the Iranian general the flotsam of battles on the searing frontier;
looked down the barrel of a gun in Ixil.
​ have felt the tundra lift; the earth quake; the ice groan;
have seen ghost bears fish; tundra wolves white as ghosts;
the impress of angels in the snow; sundogs glare;
the aurora ripple like jellyfish petticoats.
have acknowledged Chairman Mao; hushed in the presence of the Queen;
white-scarfed the Dalai Lama; laughed with the President;
idled the time away with Amazon and Altiplano Indians,
with Rendille, Baluchi, Hunzakut, Inuit, Sioux, Lacondon, Wodaabe;
have climbed the futtock shrouds;
looked down from Kilimanjaro; up at Everest; across the Yangtze;
through The Hole in the Wall; into the the Lost Civilisation of Tibet;
have darted man-eaters in the African night;
whirred low through the bush to chainsaw rhino;
swayed on elephants; lolled in hammocks
followed in the wake of the Pinta, of Mendana
and many adventures and emotions more.