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Iceland

POETRY

AMONG WINTRY REEDS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read439 views

Among wintry reeds not far from the horizon –

where mountain rain water and ocean brine,

the Dee and the Irish Sea, become one –

is a large, white, upturned hull, storm-wrecked

from its moorings in Connah’s Quay, perhaps,

certainly abandoned for twelve month and more,

too costly, maybe, to salvage. Such

a motley of flotsam: rusting buoys;

splintered pieces of superstructure;

frayed strands of nautical rope scattered

like serpents through the wetlands’ runnels;

decomposing in the teeming marshland

this sunny, January afternoon.

 

The light has gone in the west over the hills.

The chattering in the hidden lagoons

among marshland reeds has almost ceased.

Returning from the stubble fields inland

thousands and thousands of pink-footed geese,

collegiate in flight, were black and calling

against the westering sun. Now – migrants,

wintering from the Arctic islands: Iceland,

Greenland, Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard –

they are roosting in silent communes.

 

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POETRY

LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read696 views

Just beyond the redundant sandstone seawall

a stonechat flies from reed to reed – golden now

for autumn – singing its brief notes with each flight.

In hidden lagoons among the reed beds

are thousands of migrants, pink-footed geese –

with their incessant, metallic chattering –

wintering from Greenland and from Iceland.

 

***

 

Swaddled we bask on a secluded bench

facing the westering sun, which glints

on the river’s one navigable channel

mercurial on the opposite bank.

Even in clear weather the far coast

is too distant to be detailed. Today’s

light haze obfuscates its hilly fields

and three small towns – except for a sixties

high-rise of slum-clearance social housing

that looms, eyeless, like a far off grave marker.

 

***

 

Out of some profound lake filled from mountain moors

an ice age made, the river rushes white,

over scattered glacial debris,

through a long, deep limestone vale, flows

past oak woods and stands of willows, edges

pastureland and industrial estates to shape

this vast estuarial landscape – that today

is gold and quicksilver.

 

 

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

NORTH

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments2 min read3.6K views

Flying north west to Reykjavik we kept pace

with the sunset – its reds, its oranges,

its prism of blues – but landed in darkness.

We were coached to our hotel past concrete

apartments, advertisement hoardings,

and neon lit diners that could have been

the outskirts of any large developing town.

 

Iceland has the landmass of Ireland,

the population of Coventry,

most of whom live in Reykjavik –

a calm, civic, prosperous, caring place

with its galleries, museums, libraries,

concert hall, university, and

hot water pumped from the geysers inland.

Nevertheless, surrounded by volcanoes,

we felt close to some northernmost frontier.

 

Its centre has the charm of San Francisco’s

North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39.

We walked downhill to the old harbour

past wooden houses, expensive shops,

elegant graffiti, and steep cross streets.

On the pavement by the public library

was a waterlogged paperback copy

of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.

 

Until the Celts and the Vikings came –

westering exiles, chancers, pilgrims;

seafarers and storytellers; thralls,

nobles, and the odd priest – the only mammal

was the arctic fox, here since the last ice age.

 

We left for the airport in daylight.

The landscape – deforested by all

the mammals except the fox – seemed tundra-like:

the rich, volcanic top soil exposed

against a backdrop of snowy mountains.

 

We flew along the southern coast eastwards.

When the city ends, there is only

the occasional homestead before the ocean

rolls below in sunlight, waters that might break

suddenly with imaginary whales

after we have passed – for we saw none

on our half-day excursion from Reykjavik

out into the North Atlantic’s gunmetal

grey spraying us, pitching us, bucking us.

Our tickets remain valid for future trips

forever until we see at least one

Blue, Humpback, Minke, Orcha or Sperm whale –

an honourable, optimistic deal.

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

MARTIN MERE WETLAND, LANCASHIRE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.9K views

Before the marsh on the coastal plain was drained –

to turn the dark, rich glacial soil

into the broad fields of market gardens,

selling fresh produce south to the port city

burgeoning daily from mouth to mouth –

the mere was vast, eight square miles and more.

 

Family groups wandered the margins –

to fish, collect eggs, snare birds. Settlements

became hamlets, became villages:

cutting the reeds for thatching, cutting the peat

for cooking fires from the ice age bogland.

 

***

 

The long orangey-pink streaks of sun setting

over the Irish Sea turn the lake

from silver to pewter, and the birds

to cut-outs. A two carriage commuter train

crosses at the furthest edge, its windows

rectangles of bright yellow in the twilight –

as the watchers in the hides observe,

in a barely whispered wonderment,

thousands of pink-footed geese appear.

 

They are wintering here from the breeding grounds

in the mountains of Iceland and Greenland –

by day feeding on stubble fields, in the dusk

settling noisily on these dark waters

with their poignant, slightly throaty calls,

their myriad wings black in the fading light.

 

 

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POETRY

WINTERING

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.3K views

Pink-footed geese are wintering on the marshes

west of here – flocks from Spitzbergen, Iceland,

Greenland. This late October morning

the garden is full of noises: the trimming

and shaping of hedges, bushes, trees,

the blowing and gathering of leaves –

and high cries as a skein flies eastwards

to feed on wheat stalks in the stubble fields.

 

The afternoon is disturbed by sirens –

not fire or police or ambulance.

There have been explosions somewhere north

we are informed – but all is well. At twilight,

as usual, directly overhead

the geese, in their centuries, return,

cries like ululations.

 

 

 

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POETRY

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.6K views

After we have booked our whale watching trip,

we spend the afternoon at Yoko Ono’s

‘Imagine Peace’ in the Hafnarhús

gallery, where we put peace stickers

on maps of the world and our grand daughter

writes on her label to hang on the peace tree

‘I wish I could have lovelyness for ever

and ever and ever and ever’ – then she

and I play the war game chess. Later

we have fish and chips – battered in spelt

and oven roasted respectively –

with Skyr dips, then visit the Volcano House

next door with its array of lava

jewellery and volcanic ash soap.

I watch her wondering, processing.

When we leave it is raining heavily.

We make our way up Bankastræti,

where the public loos have been transformed

into The Icelandic Punk Museum.

The motliest of queues waits in the rain

for Johnny Rotten to cut the tape.

We stop for a wee in Dunkin Donuts

on Laugavegur, then she and I

shelter under an awning waiting

for her parents and grandma window shopping

despite the downpour. We hold wet hands –

an old man and a child.

 

 

 

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