Iceland – by Iris Anne Lewis
Mount Hekla, 5050 BC
Waves churn, the earth shudders.
A wakened dragon rises from the seething sea,
breathes out sulphurous smoke
and noxious steam.
Hekla’s gaping mouth spews out
a brew of molten rock.
The mountain grows.
A river, radiant as the sun, flows,
flashes white, gold, orange, flaming red,
cools to crimson, then dullest black.
A lake of lava forms a cinder bed
as hard and dark as a witch’s heart.
Thingvellir, 930 AD
Sails flap in steam-filled bays.
Boats beach on blackened sand.
Vikings settle, claim the land.
Voices echo, men assemble.
Laws are made and judgements given.
At the chasm which ripped the earth
Parliament first has its birth.
A strange conceit, or just a quirk of the witch’s art
that people meet where continents part.
Eyjafjallajokull, 2010 AD
The glacier blisters, the icecap boils.
Steam scalds the sky.
Clouds of ash coil through the air.
No planes can fly.
The modern world’s in trouble.
The fire burns, the cauldron bubbles.
Somewhere Else Writers Group 