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Dear Iceberg
by Tresha Haefner

     "My dream in life is to reach out and touch an iceberg"
     
Journal entry from a boy with autism

Here is the glass moon
hung over a table of snow.
The flower vases offering up
their blossoms of ice.

Up here iceberg we have broken glass.
Broken ships.
Splinters of oars lost by the Romans,
and the Toyota broken down
on the side of the 101.

Up here iceberg we have whole lexicons
for loneliness. A rocket ship
that cannot reach farther
than the moon.

Iceberg, we are all silent wanderers.
Some of us have cell phones,
the internet and airplanes,
and people who will hug us
morning and night.

Iceberg, we've got mirrors.
We've got photos of our planet from space.
Iceberg, we've got images of you
on our laptops.

In a small room, in a small school,
a boy we cannot understand
writes to you.

I picture him in a ship
in the Southernmost part of the planet,
reaching his fingers into the night.

Tell me, Iceberg, do you enjoy these small dark hours
on the coldest part of earth,
the silent conversation of the Aurora Australis,
The whale swimming under your belly?

Iceberg, do you feel the breath of a seal on your skin?
The heart of the bear beating, hot in the confines
of your wet and wild ice?

 


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