Sunken

Standing outside my cabin door,

I pause to weigh the

gravity of the moment 

as the ice cube in my tumbler

has yet again failed to sink.

I had expectations

and one of them was 

that said ice would 

settle like silt to its 

leaden crystal base.

Buoyant to a fault versus 

some levitation deemed 

the act of a fickle god.

 

It was of course an 

ill-cast conundrum

if you considered my current dilemma.

That here in the midst 

of this entire ocean, we had 

somehow struck an object 

which dwarfed that of our 

famed yet ill-forsaken ship.

Indeed, there are things 

of which the might of man 

would simply not permit, 

but what am I if not subject to 

the might of said manhood floundered?

And lo but the ship was sinking 

for the mere fact that 

the ice in the tumbler 

of which I held so firmly

now defied all laws of gravity.

Said law of God so brutally flawed.

 

And here I find it necessary

to define the word 'float', i.e.

that which is suspended in fluid

or rather, to rest upon the surface.

And to my mortal dismay,

I must disavow that the 

ship upon which I stand 

was in anyway to be esteemed 

   unsinkable— 

that until this fated moment,

the baggage there on the

far side of my cabin door

was always meant to define me,

yet here I am naught 

but a vacuous hull,

ripped open at the seam.

We with our given baggage… 

What need of life's belongings 

within a life now absent longing?

 

And I'm standing on the outside

of the ship's railing just as

its ruptured bow reaches its apex.

And lo but the water below is a 

good one hundred feet or more.

Here at this divined now 

dread highpoint of my life, 

who could possibly ask for more?

 

So for lack of a lash I release,  

and there untethered to tangible intent,

plummet from utmost summit.

The fall...   

    The fall...

There unto a pall of frigid ocean which 

comes to envelope the whole of me.

And what with lungs deflated,

I of sodden soul here simply sink.

 

And I midst a maelstrom of malady, 

feel the toxic touch of myriad hands 

as they reach out to grasp 

at the sheath of my clothed sleeve 

in an frantic attempt to pull themselves 

toward a concept of breath of 

which I have sadly abandoned.

 

And with their assist 

I as a soul submerge. 

There depleted I sink 

to begin my descent 

into that of dire darkness,

and yet… 

and yet I do not drown.

Indeed, I do not die

  but here eerily glide.

 

Indeed twenty yards down

I come in contact with the

iceberg's angled shelf and there

glissade along its glistening surface.

Glistening for the fact it would

appear to be here illuminated.

This from a glow of 

that which I myself would 

strangely appear to provide.

 

And just as my phosphorescence

comes to reach its radiant peak,

I drop from the ice shelf's frigid edge

and there catch a glimpse of the

ships vast propeller still awhirl and 

unsound now a fathom sunken down.

 

It occurs that were I made of ice,

I would surely have therewith risen;

if dead most certainly the same,

and yet here continue 

this destitute descent toward 

an uncertain stygian destiny.

 

Feeling I can be annulled no further,

my present phosphorescence

invites the lucid gaze of a passing whale.

Its massive eye drawing so close

that I can see myself reflected

within the curve 

of its convex cornea.

 

And there with a fear that 

my lux of luminescence

might expose a leviathan secret,

the whale shudders, rolls and 

there slowly recedes, 

cetacean now gone from sight.

 

 

Spiraling further down,

I find myself wondering how

at such a crushing depth,

I have yet to gasp for air.

Indeed, that the need to inhale

would appear an 

antiquated afterthought.

And I would here further ruminate

this lack of lung inflation 

were it not that my feet

have just now settled 

upon the ocean’s frigid floor.

 

That this...    

   This...

That all of this I would pause to deem

within the utter realm of the fantastic

were it not that at just this moment,

I glance up to there see the keel of the ship

coming directly down upon me,

yet with a few nimble steps to my left,

the bow sighs and settles 

to sea-bed just beside me 

amidst a mighty plume of silt.

 

A moment or so later,

I'm standing outside my cabin door,

considering how best to retrieve 

an entire lifetime of baggage,

when I look down to there notice 

that I am still holding that same 

crystal tumbler in the 

bones of my fleshless hand.

 

And I’m somewhat stunned to find 

that there at this tumbler’s 

deepest depth 

lies a shard of sunken 

iceberg.

 

Ó2021 Jack David Hubbell