If you’re like a past version of me, then all you currently know about icebergs is they’re a massive chunk of ice broken off from a glacier and that one of them sunk the Titanic. 

This is just the tip of what they truly are underneath that passing glance. When I learned more about them, my haiku turned out to be a hot mess at first because there was so much I wanted to say about icebergs that I couldn’t decide on just one thing.

But as I practiced writing this kind of poem and learned more about it, my haiku gained more focus. The surprising amount of life icebergs are havens for or the gorgeous zebra-like colors they could come in or the journeys these magnificent structures made – I eventually came to see none of these things were what I wanted my spark to be. They were all really just loving parts of the whole. I could feel it.

Only I still wasn’t sure what the bigger picture was…

until I read an online article at Knowable Magazine by Lindzi Wessel titled “The Base of the Iceberg: It’s Big and Teeming with Life.” As it turned out, it would be Mattias Cape’s words in that article that would help me find the sudden realization of what I’d actually already experienced through learning about icebergs but somehow couldn’t see until then.

And I was humbled by the way I’d first looked at icebergs because I never once thought a piece of ice could make me feel so warm and full. So this time, I’d like to express my appreciation not only to Nuno Antunes and Lindzi Wessel but Mattias Cape for helping me make this poem feel like a sunrise. 

At least, it does to me now. Thank you so, so much.