Iceland by Ehsa

20171020_001603The grass here is strong, sways like fur when brushed by the wind. There are fences to lock out those who would eat it. Hills and dales, holes and rivers, golden green and blue-red sky, sunset that lasts all night and life-giving cold.

There is a fierce beauty and a whistling loneliness in this wind, in this cold, that bites to the bone, a crunch where the two collide – even fishermen cry sometimes.

Volcanoes come and go, low and ready, molding islands, burning trees, swallowing the living like wine. Then, blunted by time and moss, they once more feed the sheep.

Tall, ancient, cracking cliffs, forever home to the trolls, the foolish trolls who love the cold night air too much, so much that they linger until dewy dawn, and the sun turns them to stone.

And black beaches, so long, so treacherous, that shipwrecked souls die in a sea of sand, parched, empty, so far and yet so close, and when they are found it will be the pattern that their mothers knit into their sweaters that bears the news to their family, that they might grieve.

In the east, a man plays his fiddle for a newborn foal.