Iceberg

My ancient bones creak gently with the slight ebb and flow of the Atlantic Ocean. I shiver with pleasure as a rattle of hailstones tickles my back. What wouldn’t I give for a hearty scratch. You know the kind I mean. The perfect amount of pressure, the sort that hits the spot exactly. Oh it almost makes me shudder just thinking about it.

Alas, shuddering is one of your human moves not available to me except in those moments when I was breaking away from the glacier.

It probably looks like a strange, lonely life to you. Since snowflakes started to gather and compress to build me, cell by cell, thousands of years ago, until I broke off the Jakobshavn glacier much more recently, I can’t claim a lot of accomplishments.

I float. I’m cold. I enjoy looking out for the humpback whales. When I was still part of the glacier, I could sometimes feel reindeer and even the odd polar bear climbing over my back. These days I’m lucky if a stray sea eagle comes by.

I’m not even particularly big anymore, as icebergs go. We see each other sometimes – even smash into each other occasionally. I know I’m not one of those mighty icebergs I’ve heard about. I do my best. I know my limitations. It’s not something I have a lot of control over, so I’ve learnt to live with myself as I am.

And I know how it goes for us icebergs. Although you might consider the seas around here pretty perishing – the water is below freezing point and only liquid because of the salt – in the end I will melt into it. Drop by drop, trickle by trickle.

It takes a while of course. I’ve seen some of us getting towed away by ships. Rumour has it they end up broken into a million pieces and kept underground wrapped in straw until their melt water has all soaked into the ground. Strange way to go.

So I accept my fate. I float here in the sea, enjoying the winter months and fearing the midnight sun. Knowing my days are numbered. Just like you I suppose. We all go sooner or later. We’ve passed the spring equinox now, so the sunlight is working on my upper surfaces. Sliding molecules away one by one and into the sea. I know I’m only a quarter of my original size now. The clock is ticking. In time, I will sink beneath the waves and be nothing but a watery memory. Another forgotten glacier.

Not yet though. Now it is night and I can relax. Nothing to do. Just be.

My meditative state is disrupted by the distant sound of a ship. They are just starting to come by more often now that the weather and the seas are easing. I wonder where they are going. Who they are. Why they all choose to be in this strange empty hostile expanse of nature.

Are they frozen too? Needing the cold to eke out their lives a little longer? Are they as unable to control their destiny as I am? Hapless and hopeless. Somehow ending up on that metal hulk with as little choice as I ended up moving inexorably towards the sea within that glacier?

I sigh. And the wind sighs too across my exposed surfaces. Starlight glints on the ice crystals that form and melt and reform along my ridges.

The ship is getting closer now. I can hear faint strains of music. Do these people not sleep? I can almost hear the chink of ice in cocktail glasses. Might that ice be part of one of my family? Although there is a strange rumour circulating that these creatures can make ice themselves now. In a matter of hours apparently. It seems highly improbable.

I creak again, settling against the tides, feeling the wisps of sea fog caress my slopes.

Still getting closer? That’s unusual. It looks like a bigger one than the rest.

Is it just because I am getting smaller that it looks so big? No, I think it actually is pretty big. Not bigger than me of course, but I hide most of my glory beneath the surface of the water. I wouldn’t like to bump into it that’s for sure. Especially with that pointed front.

It’s so quiet around here usually, that the ships always seem like huffing puffing dragons. Snorting and steaming. Such a racket they make. Such a fuss. Maybe they should just accept their fate and sit silently in the sea like I do. Well apart from the odd creak.

It’s getting awfully loud now. Anyone would think it was coming straight for me. Except that would be ridiculous. I may be a fraction of my former fighting weight but I’m still a hefty beast. I could make matchsticks of that vessel if I was inclined to violence.

But I’m not. I’m a peace-loving iceberg. Thanks to my tens of thousands of years in the glacier, I have developed a lot of equanimity. I have learnt the art of forgiveness. Of acceptance. We icebergs are a pretty zen lot in general, you know.

It does seem hell bent on destruction though. If I could shout, or throw up a flare, I would. But I can do nothing except wait. Watch and wait as it steadily comes closer and closer.

Until there are no options left. No moves that will save us.

I can only wait, with all the equanimity I can muster, for the impact.