Icelandic Cousins

Six thousand miles from Reykjavíkon MacKerriker, the bathers, slick withtanning creams, scalps dazed by heat,pelts bleached by sun, lie beachedamong the crags and chips of slate,conversations drifting like seagulls.

Where the muddy river meets the sea,six thousand miles from Reykjavík,the children play, freckled hens runningcircles beneath the bay laurels’ shade.Iceland’s glacial rivers, her hot, ashyvolcanoes far off, exotic as Jakarta.

One must have a mind of cloudbeside this spray sizzling on hot sandbeneath a blazing sun, to call to mindonce more those white caps congealing,the ice outland of Iceland’s shores, herfloes vanishing in a blurred horizon;

one must have been absent a long timeto reconfigure the trees scalinga fog-singed air and dissipating ash,near sleep to see in them the trees of thatfar island, and the gulls whose circlingflight tilts the soaring, dizzy limbs.