Category: Iceland Poems

THE HIDDEN FOLK

Land of falling waters,

Land of ice and fire

Where the Hidden People

Have chosen to retire,

They say Eve’s unwashed children

Were forced to hide from God

And so they fled beneath the earth

To shelter from His rod.

They will do you favors

If you spare their homes,

But woe will surely follow

If you disturb their domes.

Boulders scattered in the fields,

Seastacks on the shore,

Six-sided basalt columns,

Jagged lava flows:

All the work of Hidden Folk

Who can become your friends

Or who can do you mischief

If you defeat their ends.

Land of falling waters,

Land of ice and fire,

There is much in Iceland

To gaze at and admire.

(June 2014)

WILD HARVEST

Icelanders know where sea birds live

In crevice and cranny, on crag and cliff.

Icelanders know how to climb

And where to look and at what time.

The locals have learned just how to take

Their eggs from murres and kittiwakes:

Not too many and just when

So every hen will lay again.

Stormy petrels and razorbills,

Fulmars, gannets and wagtails:

In markets you will see them all

Colored, speckled, large and small.

They cannot get enough of puffins

Yet puffin populations boom

And eider ducks produce big eggs

As well as marketable down.

Sheerwaters and guillemots,

Only the ravens are their foes.

Icelanders know what they’re worth:

Icelanders are for the birds.

THERE BE DRAGONS

Beneath the Iceland ice cap

Sleeping dragons lie

Dreaming of the day when

They once again will fly.

And while their dreams are pleasant

They lie in restful ease,

But in a fiery nightmare

Their hot breath starts to wheeze.

So in the month of April

Of the year two thousand ten

Eyjafjallajokull

Awakened once again.

The melting ice above him

Flooded the coastal streams

And added to the outburst

Their blinding, boiling streams.

The earth shook with his movements

As he rose to his knees

And lava flowed like red blood

In rhythm with his keens.

Until he launched a geyser

With his desperate dragon roar:

A tower of tephra boulders

That tumbled toward the shore.

As his fire at last abated,

He sank down in despair

With just some final hiccups

Of blue haze in the air.

But his neighbor Holuhraum

Has now begun to stir 

So Icelanders are watchful

For new tremors in their earth.

And they keep the ancient adage

In the forefront of their minds:

Do not disturb the universe,

Let sleeping dragons lie.

THE TASTE OF ICELAND

Iceland tastes like dried cod

That sweetens slowly as you chew.

Whale’s fishy beef taste may seem odd

Until it becomes familiar to you.

Pickled herring and smoked trout

With slices of cheese and deli meats

Boiled eggs, hothouse tomatoes and cukes

Are arrayed on trays as breakfast treats

Flanked by rich brown thermal bread.

Yogurts, skyrs and fluffy mousse,

Golden butter and liverwurst spread

Are served with espresso and apple juice.

LIVING ON THE EDGE

In Iceland the shore’s the place to thrive:

Warmed by the North Atlantic Drift,

Your crops and you will stay alive,

Safe from the glaciers on your roof,

Those peaks robed in eternal snows

Whose rivers water and feed your crops

That burgeon in the summer’s light.

The shore’s the place to love and hope

And garner the bounty of the sea,

To dry the cod and ferment the shark,

Harvest birds’ eggs and minki whale meat

To see you through the winter’s dark.

ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

A line of horses smoothly pacing

Past the windows of our bus,

Heads to flanks, manes streaming,

They look like poetry in motion to us.

Splashed white, silver and golden,

Dapples, duns, roans and bays,

Chestnut, smutty, palominos,

Buckskin, creme and smoky grays.

Flaxen manes and tails flow past

Like Neptune’s steeds upon the waves,

Slipping from our view at last,

Icelandic horses on their way.

LUPIN LAND

They call you Iceland, but to me,

You are the land of the light-flecked lupins

Lapping liquidly up from the sea,

Flowing like lava on slopes and banks,

Softening the once-rough lava beds,

Cooling the once-hot thermal earths,

Injecting beneficent nitrogen,

Fixating fine and friable soils.

Their petals are blue as the glacial flows,

Tinged with the white of glacial ice.

Like the ancient Norse, they’ve arrived to stay.

They’ll hold their ground, come what may.