Boreas, the North Wind
I am in Iceland, 90 miles from the Arctic Circle,
walking through a gorge in a valley between
European and North American plates. Fierce
Boreas funnels its headstrong wind right at me
tears my knit hat off my head, rakes my hair.
I’m in Rekjavik, at the city’s highest point
walking half-way between Hallgrimskirja Church
and Leif Eriksons’ statue when Boreas sends a gust
ripping glasses from my face. I chase them across
the square, miraculously retrieve them intact.
The is a land of extremes, powerful geysers,
roiling rivers, cascading waterfalls, high mountains,
floating icebergs, volcanoes, poised to erupt, lava
flows, one thermal Blue Lagoon, acres in size
defies frigid air, soothes sore muscles.
This is a land ruled by the North Wind Boreas, erratic,
hungry, sleeping rarely, it is terrifying, exhilarating,
raw as life itself.
It’s hard to comprehend when I look out,
but the science has left so little doubt,
ten thousand years back, this place I call home
was chilly depths, where only fishes roamed.
The whole if it a lengthy glacial lake,
but to my mind that seems like some mistake.
Ten thousand years…that doesn’t seem so long,
Karan Tepe is older, it feels so wrong…
to change so much in very little time,
that this was water seems strange to my mind;
but sandy soil, erosion on cliffs,
scraps on the rock, they tell the truth of it.
Ten thousand years…that high ridge was a shore,
what will in look like in ten thousand more?
A poem’s like a snapshot of a quantum state of mind!)
where sharper image obfuscates the artist in the pix.
Reflections always backward; Man’s goals crippled from the start
for poetry’s a quest that rhymes with matters of the heart.
Dark matter’s hard to credit with the gravitas it owns.
Its mass eclipses stars that span the universe we see,
yet stars accelerate not toward but from their mass (how odd)
like leaves that scatter out before a storm announcing God.
The things we see will rarely count, the truth is seldom kind,
a chessboard’s global weighting’s what’s essential to life’s mix.
Let’s say Earth’s Flood’s the “Gospel Truth,” where’s water now, my friend?
Are snowbound poles Earth’s past Flood’s bones, their melted form, life’s end?
It’s not enough and won’t suffice, but let no one throw stones
(while Science just approximates, the Bible’s poetry!)
The wells, a desert hides, can save us from what makes us vain,
and lessons that life wants to share ‘join at the hip’ with pain.
Brian Johnston
21st of January in 2022
Sandstone, rough, gritty.
Shale. Cool, layered, shelved.
Beryl. Ugly but if you can keep it for a million years
You will have emerald and aquamarine from beryl.
I am staring at my piece now, watching it not change.
Geology, geometry, biology, biography
Anthropology, psychology, geography, photography,
Psychiatry, psychometry, cartography, graphography,
So many ol-ogies and og-Raph-ies, so little time.
Yet am I studying any of them?
Not today. Today I am sitting in my lazy girl,
Watching a year’s worth of a designer show.
I have been starring at other people working like mad.
Learning nothing but as it is my day off, not feeling a bit bad.
The ologies and ographies can wait another five years or so.
When I retire and I have watched every design show,
This is when I can study all the ologies and ographies.
So leave me alone today if you please.
The study of earth.
Topics are plate tectonics,
Rock types and rivers.
Seasons come and go
The years pass away
Where the river flows
Deserts once held sway
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