The Fig Tree above Charybdis

A single tree growing from the cliff face directly above Charybdis, its roots twisted through stone and soil, ancient and unmovable. After the lightning bolt has split his ship and drowned every last one of his men, Odysseus drifts back into the strait on a piece of the keel. The current sucks him toward the whirlpool. He cannot swim out of it. He throws himself upward at the moment of the dive and grabs the fig tree. The wood splinters his palms. He hangs there with his arms screaming while the whirlpool eats his ship and spins the timbers in the dark. He counts. He does not let go. When the timbers come back up, vomited out, he drops back onto the wood. The fig tree is the smallest, most ridiculous piece of geography in the journey, a single inconvenient plant on a cliff, and the only reason Odysseus gets to Calypso’s island instead of the mud at the bottom of the sea.