Unusual Diamonds

Unusual Diamonds

Unusual Diamonds

The ice dotting the volcanic black sand of Diamond Beach glistens intensely.

It’s many faceted surfaces, some rounded, some angular, all smooth and reflective,

tell stories of transformation and offer glimpses of elemental interactions.

These ephemeral beauties created by the slow freezing of pure glacial water

took time to form, as real diamonds do, the slow compression forcing out 

most air bubbles, making space for unusual crystals to take shape in their place.

I crouch down studying the surfaces of these gems, peer through the layers 

to deeper marvels, discover a scorpion, a lightening bolt, an eye behind bars.

These mysterious jewels the remnants of icebergs once part of Vatnajökull Glacier,

ripped free to roam Lake Jökulsárlón, for no ice is strong enough to withstand 

the power of wind and water once tiny fractures are formed and temperatures rise.

The ice floats and shape shifts in this basin formed a mere decade before my birth.

While I raised three children to adulthood, the glacier has been disappearing,

slowly at first, then escalating to the length of a city block each year in recent decades.

For millennia, there was no lagoon, now it widens and deepens with each breath I take 

melting the ice from below while infiltrating cracks that cause thawing from within.

Cast off to navigate the eddies of their momentum, icebergs collide, crack and melt

until whittled down enough to pass through the bottleneck where river meets sea. 

Once out in the ocean’s open waters, the real erosion begins. Buffeted by swells,

chunks of ice break off in the thundering surf, a syncopated symphony with accents

of pops and groans as remnants are violently thrust under and surface time and again,

often unrecognizable, before being washed ashore. But the elements remain relentless.

The surf rolls under, over, and around these jewels, pushing them into the sand

that sculpts and polishes them to better reflect the very light that diminishes them.

There is one certainty; these shards will melt and disappear, likely before I die,

Taking with them the history recorded in their layers, which I find reassuring.

Fragments invite conjecture and the creation of myths to make things whole again,

but the breaking off changes you, even if pieces remain to make you remember.

When the tide is out, the frozen jewels before my feet appear solid and fixed. 

Yet beneath the surface, twisting shapes tell a different story of struggle and loss

and victory too, for all the powerful energies that brought these perfectly incomplete

manifestations of metamorphosis to this beach, for this sunrise and perchance another.

––Lynne Buchanan

Ice Brought in by Mystic Waters

What follows are images of icebergs and ice jewels in various stages of melt Each is different and each uniquely beautiful. The process of their unbecoming is what makes them more marvelous.

A Trio of Mystical Icebergs on Diamond Beach

Sunrise Over Icebergs, Diamond Beach

Skull Iceberg a la Max Ernst

Icebergs in the Surf, Diamond Beach

Reclining Miniature Iceberg a la Henry Moore

Glacial Blue Facet of an Iceberg After the Water Receded

Snow Heart and Ice Jewel

Ice Cocoon

Jewel Ice and Polished Stones

Frozen Heart and Mark of Zoro Beneath the Ice

Eye Peering through the Ice

Scorpion Ice Diamond Beach

Molten Ice, Traces of Transformation

Ice Textures on Either Side of a Potentially Fatal Crack