For this week’s post, I’m going to share a poem. A bit unusual, especially if you know me – I’m not a poet, and I don’t pretend to be. I wrote a poem for a writing contest for the Iceland Writers Retreat. I didn’t win the contest, but I wanted to share the poem anyway. It’s all about two of my favorite things, stories and Iceland.

Eternal

Stories swirl through my mind,

like wind over rocks.

The wind is unceasing, eternal, over these fields

Eternal,

like the stories that came to this island of rocks and moss,

rivers and beauty. Stories sung

by the ancient men in their longboats and

the women weaving by candlelight.

Trolls in the mountains

and elves in the rocks

joy in the water, despair in the ice.

The stories have always been,

like the teeth of the mountains and the lust

of the sea

Eternal.

Stories change,

as the ancient men in their boats become

the glass and concrete villages of modern progress.

The mountains breathe fire,

and the land of rocks and fields and joy and despair

is changed.

And lava and ash become rock once again, leaving

land changed, but unchanged

Eternal.

Ancient men of songs and the sea are but

stories to us today. Stories, like

trolls hiding in the jaws of the mountains or the

rivers of lava that remake the land. But

as those stories, they still live.

Joy and despair and rivers

of beauty and ice on the rocks

All are stories

All are eternal.

Aren’t we all stories?