ICEBERG

You loom ahead, massive, a nameless monster through
dawn’s thickened mist. Slick and virginal you
                       
                       rise and rise and rise,


our frightened eyes cannot take you in, cannot surmise
your meanings, your reasons for emerging, completely.


Like an elephant tusk, you pierce the water line, surprise the universe.
Horizon’s gleaming zinc sliced in two by this serrated white knife tip.


You’re an angel of searing kindness clad in ivoried robe,
open arms beckon us homewards between
blue air and the brace of ocean’s chill.


Perhaps you’ve come to awaken us from visions dulled,
our paltry fears on this ship of hoary fools.  All our studied numbing,
how we cannot feel, nor become, nor love.


Our frozenness, our grayish dirges.


Through chattering teeth I shout: are you lonely here
in this wild immensity, this frigid sea of salt? 
Have you wandered far from your ice-bound herd,
do you need our help to find your meandering
scattered mates, to unfreeze your cratered hope,


to release an icy bitterness silently encased,
towards those like us who fear and hate 
your sudden god-like presence?


Iceberg luminous, Christ-like beyond all words,
ominous as a serial killer in our fog-bound dreams.


I shout out loud as we face your awe-full whiteness---another poem,
much braver than this, must venture out past well-worn habits
that cloak and twist our sensing, towards what lies beneath your exposed throat


(that roars louder than a hunter’s lust down where your guts abide)


yes, to relinquish our ship-bound illusions of safety, an all- too-human error,
dive way beyond our terror to taste your animal depths
and truly begin to glean what’s unknown in these still waters,
as you, scintilla of the sea, 
                                               
                                      rise and rise and rise,


so soon one day before melted, wasted away from hubris our awful global greed,
you may be felt from head to toe, you--our friend and foe-- finally being seen.