Evidentia

UNGAVA BAY
By George Tombs

The fog shrouded us
for days but now lifts suddenly
like a curtain rising on some other-worldy stage.
Along the horizon, I see that yellowish northern glimmer
and closer to us, under a gloomy sky,
disappearing into the still hazy twilight,
icebergs of all shapes.
Some massive, jagged, others rounded, voluptuous
several grey peaks, others blue and tilting oddly,
all silent, unstable, in agony.
Irresistibly, I slip
into the rift between the visible and the real.

Then we see it. A bewitching bulky thing on the horizon
a plume of black smoke wafting above it.
Stealthily, we approach this steaming beast
which, after a few hours, is transformed before our eyes
into a table of silvery-blue ice,
a succession of peaks and passes,
ribbed with dripping crevices.
It is the largest iceberg we have ever seen:
three, four hundred times the size of our ship. A monster.
Its glistening mass effortlessly conceals
the icebreaker standing by for our later rendez-vous.
My mind can no longer cope, and shuts off.

Midnight. There is no need to anchor. The ship is locked in the ice.
Some sailors go down the ladder to stretch their legs on the sea
Their eyes, tortured by the reverberation of the northwest
willingly greet the pale twilight.
To starboard just now, leaning on the rail,
I looked at the rugged coastline of Baffin Island and hovering above it,
its inverted mirror image.
Hollows and humps, doubled and thrown up into the air.
Where the sky should be
stretches of glittering open water.
At dawn, an iceberg is grafted to its heavenly twin.

The two take on a series of disguises: maypole, top hat, puffball,
They separate, linger a moment, then evaporate.

Ungava Bay. Things seem to be on a more human scale.
“Seem”, I say, because I am on my guard.
The ship makes her way through the ice,
ripping turquoise blocks apart that screech along the hull,
dancing in the water like sizzling, deranged buoys.
They resurface in our wake, meld back into the icepack,
with a chastened look… We will see about that!
After steaming water whose volume overwhelms us,
water resistant as steel,
water to walk on, and water floating in the air
Here is treacherous water ready to slice us in two
like a knife through a slab of butter.

Now a storm gets up - Beaufort 11,
The sea is covered with long patches of foam
Stretched thin, by the force of the wind.
The steep crests of waves rise, collapse on themselves, rise again,
Deadly blocks of ice are pitched here and there.
Once, twice, the ship seeks shelter
in a safe estuary
but we cannot make our way in. On the third approach, we succeed.
Moaning, our ship pulls on her anchor
listing as if in her final death-throes,
Going from port to starboard is like climbing up a hill.
Things are just what they appear to be. Everything can happen.