Ode to Mount Herdubreid, Queen of the Icelandic Mountains

Oh majestic Herdubreid, Queen of Icelandic Mountains, I honor you

on this mother’s day as you look out over lava fields and desertscapes,

the gale-whipped terrain of Odadahraun, the Desert of Misdeeds,

the Jokulsa a Fjollum, a glacial river churning with ice melt and silt

and Askja crater lakes Oskuvatn and Vita, with their opaque blue waters.

Wearing a crown, you regally rise up over this oasis of beautiful barrenness.

In this wilderness, especially in winter, what is heaven for one is hell for another.

Bracing myself to remain upright as I scaled the mountain pass terrain,

I watched rose-colored clouds brush against your flat top as the sun descended.

Patterns of black sand and ice led to you, an epiphany in this earthly paradise.

That you are a miracle, I am certain, formed in a single eruption below the ice.

A phreatomagmatic explosion when magma met water, creating juvenile clasts

of pillow basalts and fragments of glass, formed by the quick cooling of intense

heat from within your core, the cause of your elegant flat top, a Nordic mesa

that bespeaks innate wisdom in stopping explosions from getting out of control–

even if that meant not becoming the tallest summit in Iceland. Not vainglorious

and content to be Queen, you do not pierce the stratosphere to attain transcendence,

The magnificence you embody is here, on Mother Earth, who harbors all of us,

just as you shielded outlaws Fjalla-Evindur and Halla in the desert for decades.

Good mothers offer forgiveness, holding dear even those who have gone astray.

Yet now Mother Earth has suddenly given us all a time out for bad behavior.

Sentenced to our immediate homes, we are not permitted to explore you

or any grandiose wonder of the world. You, like all exotic destinations,

have become a dream to me, but was our relationship meant to be this way?

You inhabit the land of Gods and giants and trolls, and the hidden folk too.

Perhaps we were not meant to see you at all, but must find our own lodestars

as we navigate the pass between the life we lived and the life that beckons us.

And yet for that one sunset I was blessed to witness, I will always be grateful.

To see your fullness, it took all my energy to ground my feet on the artic tundra

If I’d been blown off course, I would never have seen you pointing to where I was.

Unusual Diamonds