Iceberg Poem by Morgan Michaels

In the dark I can make it out
just before sun-up
gilds the gray wavelets
with its salmon breath:
a numinous blank,
a looming obscurity,
jamming the horizon.
A scraped-up crust,
a whitish glow-
a stolid iceberg! God,
just fancy it -
swimming slowly into view,
defining itself,
agrandening in its briny pan
like an image in a darkroom
resolving with no benefit of light,
like something chemical, some-
thing photographic.

Till it's full-blown
Till complete
Cold nova-burst, winter wall,
slice of ice
how whitely you coast,
and the birds love you.

up, down, up, down,
beneath the Morning Star
there, off of the bow.

Waves baste you, all around.
Foamily, they hiss,
burst and fall away-
with plenty of others in tow.
Hiss, boom, saline green,
they rise, muster, merge,
burst into foam-flowers
and fall away.

Where do you begin, where end,
treacherous iceberg?
What of you's apparent, what's hid
underneath the leaden main?

Discover at your peril, seafarer.
Let us not venture too close.
I've no zeal for tragedy.

From here, you could be a bloated whale-
a whatever, pale whale.
But, no, you're not a whale of any hue,
nothing of the kind, at all
No, paradoxically, you're too big.

Up, down, up, down
there and gone
like a sinking ship,
hid a moment by the hungry tide
then swimming back into view
like a ship resurgent,
like an opening eye
letting the whole view through
down, up, down,
an oh-so-slow-snow-floe.

Sprawling from sea to sea,
this is how Antartica looks
only bigger-
less trodden over than Dover
and inspiring no ballad-
it is just something that happens to sea-water.

'I'm going back to bed',
someone said,
'wake me when we get there'.

The giddy waves.....