Depths of Courage
A journey into the deep places of human curiosity.
Titanic wreck bow — NOAA/Institute for Exploration
Depth crushes.
Hearts beat.
Waves lift high,
hope breathes in.
Time stands still.
The sea opens its dark mouth —
submersible descending
into the abyssal throat of the world,
every pulse swelling like a bell.
Fear spirals slow, a vortex of air.
Clouds shift; light pierces;
stars lend their thin courage.
Pressure mounts—atoms squeezed to prayer.
Science carries their despair.
Silence thickens in dense water
where light forgets its name.
Metal groans; an echo sounds.
Titanic fields—cold graves loom.
A crushing bloom of quiet.
More, ever more, and ever deep
chants the determined choir of men
whose hunger outpaces bone.
Ambition knots the narrowing air.
Footfalls ring in narrowing steel.
Sisyphean faith in bolts and gauges.
We are driven not by the whip
but by the tyrant housed within.
"Tick-tock," whispers the minute to the hour.
Steel dreams sink through a black bower —
courage entombed in ocean’s frame.
Nobility begins the voyage;
Frailty writes the end.
Yet still they go.
Lured by the secret stories below,
where the deep keeps its ledger
and the brave sign their names in breath.
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