When the Ship Began Rocking and Rolling

by Diana Woodcock

When the ship began rocking and rolling,

I would slip away—done with strolling

the deck—to get quiet and still

in the midst of chaos, to anticipate

where we were heading, the Drake

Passage leading to the most amazing

views of glacial castles, domes and

pinnacles, grottos of wind-sculpted

ice, deep vast chasms of crevasses,

to where seals rest and pengins nest

on ice-free beaches, to where a continent

more glorious and mysterious than my

wildest dreams waited for me beyond

the next floating ice berg and gust of wind.

As the ship shimmied, rocked and rolled,

I stole away to my cabin to imagine

the pristine beauty and dignity of a frozen

landscape beyond the despair, carnage

and degradation everywhere

else. Wind scoops and drifts,

ice blink* and water sky,

volcanoes’ active flame, I would try

to take it all in, knowing deep within

I’d never be quite the same.

*Ice blink: white light seen on the horizon; reflections of open water in the lower cloud layer appearing as a heavy purple blanket above the bright band of light on the horizon.

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Diana Woodcock has authored seven poetry collections, most recently Reverent Flora ~ The Arabian Desert’s Botanical Bounty (Shanti Arts, 2025), Heaven Underfoot (2022 Codhill Press Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award finalist), and Facing Aridity (2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature finalist). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she received the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Poetry Prize for Women for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders. Currently teaching at VCUarts Qatar, she holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry's role in the search for an environmental ethic.