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Iceberg Wranglers
for all our Titanic dead (legged or fluked)
Dreamed 2015/8/4 by Wayan

Professor Ahab's elegant in French,
but saltier in Yank: "I long to spur
transcendence in these scurvy curs!"
Aye, in tests his pupils unimpress--
beached, yelping seal-pups. And yet

O the fieldtrips! Once his students leap
through the oval portal to that alien sea,
peagreen-opaque, where razor-edge
bergs rise, not cyan or white, but clear
conchoidal glass-shard crags--out here,
his pupils seem porpoises to ME--
spot ice through that impenetrable stew,
dive in, swarm to the sparkling crystal
voids in the soup, swift harpoon-wrestle
jagged manifolds of latency round until
these clear solid holes in blindness are
coaxed and rolled to rear their noblest hill,
the sweetest spire o'er sea they ever can:
best of all outcomes. At least for land
creatures not full whale. Ice-ikebana on a
(sorry) Titanic scale.

How do Ahab's flock pierce olive murk?
I can only spot clear ice-halls athrust
Well above waterline, letting me deduce
Gibraltar mass beneath the muddy jade.

I'm seablind, but a fair ice-wrangler. Too
tough for a "razor" edge to cut. Though ru-
mor exaggerates. Only a mighty rigid hull
driven by hubris, steam, sail or wave
onto an errant mountainfang need dread:
the molt sea licks dull the ice-blade.
Moby Dick does not use bergs to shave.

But O to have these pupils' skill
at piercing that opaque green veil!
Not sight but sonar. A secret whale
Pings under human-seeming skull.

The Transcendentalist Dour and I
watch on beach. He peglegs upon
a wooden bench. Head eight feet high,
he glowers at flock. I tease the broody hen:


Transparent icebergs in a murky green sea under lavender sky; sketch of a dream by Chris Wayan. Click to enlarge.

"You strive to rack your pupils till
giraffed above their peers they see
far beyond school-test mediocrity.
But spare your Melville whip! A high
crow's-nest child sees a longer way,
but that lofty mast will magnify
the risk and seasick sway.

"They need no high eye. Sonar below!
Teacher in despair, you taught. Sea-echo,
not the harpoon sight you always sought.
Not whaler, but enwhaled. And what

"of Ahab's need? Remember the fall
of Sauron the Great. As the cold gold
let go in primal melt, old Gandalf felt
such joy--no longer had to nag them all;
they'd outgrown. Let the little folk alone--
heroes crucibled, they'll right their own
wrongs, Ringbearer-free. Ahabdicate!
You won't regret, you won't revoke
Mithrandir's Retirement Scheme!"

Ahab looked at me. I woke
wrangled out of my dream.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

Tip-tug the monster block!
Hard brontosaurus waltz.
I do it, full of faults:
Lack that sonar knack.
But dive in, wriggle, seek!
Do your best to wrangle.
For even awkward angle
Beats Titanic wreck.

Students climb a transparent iceberg in a murky green sea; sketch of a dream by Chris Wayan.



LISTS AND LINKS: schools - tests - There Are Doors - other worlds - on the beach - swimming and undersea dreams - ice - uncollapsed probability-sheaves - choice - initiative vs. passivity - shamanism & dreamwork - whales - sixth senses felt in dreams: telepathy, telekinesis - living with ESP - Ahab and Moby Dick - perfectionism - transcendent dreams - dream poems & digital art - Morgan Robertson's eerily predictive Titan - J.C. Middleton's lifesaving Titanic Nightmare - Graham Greene's apparently clairvoyant Titanic Image

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