Bev Tappan

Category: Iceland Poems

  • Bev reads at ESOM – 6/22

    Ellen Schmidt’s Open Mike – June 20, 2022

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
      Iceland Poems
    • Wild Harvest
    • There Be Dragons

  • ICELAND POEMS: THE HIDDEN FOLK

    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)

  • ICELAND POEMS: WILD HARVEST

    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.

  • ICELAND POEMS: THERE BE DRAGONS

    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.

  • ICELAND POEMS: THE TASTE OF ICELAND

    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.

  • ICELAND POEMS: LIVING ON THE EDGE

    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.

  • ICELAND POEMS: ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES

    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.

  • ICELAND POEMS: LUPIN LAND

    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.