Iceland

I leave soon for a trip to Iceland. My first visit was in 1973. Just after my mother’s death in December 1972, my father decided to take the family on a trip to Iceland. It was the year that Eldfell volcano erupted on the island of Heimay. The eruption had quieted by the time we were there, but people were still shoveling the ash from the village. There’s a wonderful John McPhee story from the New Yorker called Pissing on the Lava that’s really worth reading. An an Icelandic mystery called Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigridardottir that takes place on the island years after the eruption. Another favorite of mine.

I returned to Iceland in the 1980’s in the hopes of seeing Krafla erupt but missed out. I was there in 2010 for the eruption of Eyjafjajokull, in 2014 for the Bardabunga eruption, and now I hope to see the new lava flows at Fagradsfjall. Iceland has a volcanic eruption almost every five years because it sits on the fault lines of the mid-Atlantic rift and over what geologists believe is a “hot spot” of magma pools and plumes. It’s a place where eruptions are sometimes called “tourist eruptions” and allow amateurs like me to get close enough to view the earth come alive in the process of creation.

 Highway 137:  The Red Road

 On the Red Road from Kalapana to Kopoho,
my arms wound tight around his waist,
we swerved around each bend
my hair whipping against my face.

“Lean with me into the curves”
he instructed before we began
my first motorcycle ride: the glee
of children from the sixties, now almost 60.

Glimpses of ocean ravaging black lava
cliffs – mile marker 13 flashed by
blue sky, blue water,
red road reflected
my blue eyes gleaming.

At night, he whispered 
“I am not your true love”
but I didn’t believe him.
Enticing scents of sulfur flew in the bedroom
window inhabiting the arms of my dreams.

I flew back home to Maine before
the white Lexus veered into a turn
and cut in front of his Harley,
catapulting the bike and body
into that blue sky forever
changing the geography of my life.

Years later, I watched the evening news
as a wall of lava two stories high
snaked across Highway 137 halting
traffic, consuming cars, houses,
and mile marker 13.

The charcoal-fires of the earth
an inexorable march to the sea
sculpting a new landscape
and forever closing that road.

Elegy for Halemaumau

For forty years I brought armloads of anthuriums
to the rim of a crater lake far from home, to curry favor
with a youthful goddess. Those sexy, heart-shaped flowers
with penis-like spadix, lay limp against the gaping black
of Halemaumau, hidden beneath a crust, hints of heat
in steam vents and cracks like etchings on the surface.

One night the lava lake broke open and I snuck in
to get the picture. Clouds rising in the night
stars glittering over Mauna Loa like fireflies, my lens
wide open reflecting the red lake and tinted smoke rose
in streaks that appeared like light leaks on an old roll of film.

In the mist of early morning, I watched the sun’s first rays
illuminate steam flowing up steep rim walls to shroud
Lehua trees and giant ferns in a golden gauze, stars
faded from the sky while a pale moon set caressing
my bare arms, the sweet scent of hibiscus and bitter
smell of sulfur wrapped around me like a sheet.

Memories now fading to black where that lake once was.
I mourn the earth as it was when I was younger, the lake
now buried, cracked, and broken, words whispered
through a veil of time. My early morning swim in cold
Maine waters wrapped in fog, I hear a trill of loons
and know the past is no longer present.
Today is no better, no worse.

Here is the link to the Hawaii Pacific Review publication of this piece.