Drowned

'Enoch Arden' has come to mean a person, rare today who loves someone better than he loves himself. Tennyson's poem, based on the true story of a sailor, betrothed and lost at sea only to be rescued and spend years trying to reach home, illustrates our need to believe we can all act selflessly now and again. The young man's fiance marries his best friend after being convinced she will never see her true love again, and when the sailor witnesses their happiness he vows to keep from them the truth so they can live in happiness.
The desire to be selfless and the will to do so are two very different things and rarely do we find both in one individual. I'd much rather daub a tear at someone else sacrifice, my own being too hard to bear and the expectation of reward too strong.
To be submerged in the black ocean, to see coming at you an eighteen foot Narwhal, the 'ghost whale', ringed in lights woven through with myrtle is to feel the gratitude of the damned. My rescue is enough for now, as I grip the ridged edge and hold on, speeding through the darkness on my way home. This creature, armed with an eight foot spiraled tusk, has defended me and witnessed my re-birth as I stepped from the water and disappeared before I could express my gratitude.
I know I've seen him before, but my mind is clouded with the words of a poem, written over my own, obscuring his face, and even now his memory is fading into the depths of my mind.