Inspired by a new blog called ‘Old Steam Ships’
by our friend, Max, I have written a poem in
the voice of the Arctic Ship SS Endurance.
I was built for breaking ice, not for this….
this slow embrace that breaking cannot answer.
They named me well, they thought, for what I’d bear,
but endurance has a limit, and I found it
in the frozen white that never stopped arriving.
Through winter’s dark I felt the squeeze begin….
not sudden, never sudden, just a tightening,
the way a hand closes slowly around a bird
until the bird stops struggling, not from peace
but from the simple fact it can take no more.
My timbers spoke before the men did.
A groan along the keel, a shudder in the masts,
oak fighting pressure older than the oak, and losing,
plank by plank, the argument that wood makes
with an ocean turned to stone.
October came.
They stood upon the floe and watched me die
the way you watch a fire collapse instead of roar….
not loud, not fast, just settling,
board by board, into myself,
until the white closed over where I’d been.
A month I lingered, broken, in the grip,
then slipped beneath the dark and went down
singing the only song a ship has left to sing….
the long sound of water overtaking wood,
the Weddell Sea folding me into its quiet.
My wheel still stands.
My bow still points toward south.
Small lives drift down now, settling soft as snow….
not failure, but a passing of the watch
from men to creatures who never see the light.
NAR©2026
This is “Save Yourself” by KALEO
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 