then the sun glistens on a basalt cliff where gulls or terns dive to let you know you don’t belong

in their nesting areas then a car speeds by and almost hits you then you almost step in horse shit

or sheep shit you need your hat as the wind comes up you wish you hadn’t said that to them

then you get back in the car and notice a waterfall dropping off the cliff

from this angle go into the nothingness of somethingness, madness or gladness

you stop wishing and just wander in the soft moss in the rocky field in the rain in the river

in the lava remnants with the terns and gulls and ducks protecting their nests and outnumbering

humans by a multitude.

Yesterday you met an American philosopher burned out on academe who

hides from the world here watching horses on a farm driving to the edge nowhere in the

midnight sun mostly in the wee hours since he cannot sleep before you met him

you had walked alone on the small island in the river Blanda not bland but

flowing from the northwest side of the Hofsjökull glacier into Húnaflói bay

you saw Greylag geese and goslings later you drank beer with artists

a painter’s husband had a mini stroke that night you were sitting across from him.

Go soak in the geothermal pools your skin smells like sulfur as long as you’re

in Northwest Iceland and then you hear The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade

while you stare at grey clouds in a village of fishermen and birds

time reverts to stones packed inside lava mounds

elves live in certain rocks they ask us not to overturn them not to destroy

the balance between light and the times the sun will never shine.