North

Soft, translucent light shoots down from a far-away place
as the landscape turns green, again, slowly.
Pale neon lichen on top of storm-beaten branches
and I remember Vik; snow falling horizontally onto raven black sand.

Soundscapes of swans and deep white stillness
fills up my insides
and I know that it is coming back, once more;
the circle has started to turn.

White

Iceland, Spring 2013

and yet there is such stillness; buried deep.

Heidagaes

Eyes shut to the yellow-grey glow
above the icy, new-born land,
I feel the sea mist rise up from the South.

One tin hut below us
- the only sign of our print upon the land.

Fyll encircle the cliff, returning to colonial nests
in a cacophony of guttural cries;
ownership and instinct.

The rain has made the lichen seem brand new;
wet orange paint on old, decaying wood.
The smell of thyme fills the air
and I find arctic river beauty;
spongy and filled with light.

Stillness takes hold, delicately,
and words are lost to the North Atlantic breeze
that carries a perfect skein of Heidagaes
above this folkloric cliff.

Green

All wilderness seemed gone
on the last night in the city.
Days of wandering 
along zig-zag mountains,
(not quite real; kept hidden
across the Atlantic)
all boxed away inside of us.
No signs here, downtown,
of that snowstorm/
those crashes under grey-gold sky;
just beyond troll rocks and pure black sands.

Glacial maps folded away
in preparation for our return to civilization.
And so I begin to grieve, the fragments inside of me,
(reflected in milky blue waters), long to be frozen here
onto this barren landscape; forever.

The city's bright lights, after such vast emptiness,
blind me at the icy harbour.

And then, without warning, they appear; above the grey buildings.
Dancing, in spite of the sound and light, wild and unstoppable;
the Northern lights above Harpa.

You hold my hand, 
as the world around still spins.
As the wilderness covers the city lights
with its green, ancient grip.