On The Time We Wéathered a Glacier

By Maxon J. Owens

I

O Ísland, that land which brew’d me coolish and cold
Vapors by the Avens, Harebells, And the fresh’st spawn
To dine upon the same fresh, fragrance I dined on,
Loudly th’church-bells rang, far louder than I was told
By Norsemen, Gods and glaciers so extoll’d
In festivities they took up thralls with bronze and brawn,
Rustic shields, swords, spears! Swiftly drawn
On thralls which fester’d and reign’d uncontroll’d

II

So we took off, aloft grief and fright,
No weaponry! But skill, brotherly goodwill,
To create newly, a day we recall even still.
What an Albatross! Our passions aflight to speak right!
First we venture’d on green hillsides,
Keep eyes for icy beasts fashion’d their own icy hill,
Adamantine colossus! Stood so brisk and chill,
As to guide us with its aloft white light.

III

Boldly on Reykjanes, shards of ice went and came!
Rapturously, we sang hymns of martyr, suicide
And hail’d this rapturous rain in God’s name!
We observ’d the whole fields eyes wide,
Brother in arms, so gushing with pride,
Look’d up, drew his axe, and so did I!
Countryland wild we ran hasty and untame,
We consume’d the sweetest lupine,
The exceedingly flavorful weeds,
Me, yours, our souls sprouted from kinly seeds!
Endless peaks as far as our eyes did see!

IV

O brisk hours of morn!
How far does your rays lay unharm’d?
All of it did freeze, sky-god was born,
When knights rest upon their little shields, unarm’d.
O virgin day! Shred your shadows with your beam,
Far-flung this beam of mist which carried us three,
Myself, brotherly blood and our spirit one,
Alight on all a gold’n gleam,
Take up to heavenly Skylark seams!

V

Tremble! Tremble! When we see the most fear’d
Loki symbol, wintry chill shook us both in the polar pole,
Reynir round he ran around the Jotunheim temple
That everlast shield their magnum scrolls
Of secrecies, sorcery, sagas lost and untold!
White fox, you shall stand fortifying our way?
You thinketh we may not proceed to our hearts bounty,
But we wander’d in the land of God’s prey!
We neglect it, we neglect it! I doubt he! And so does he!

VI

So does his whitest naivety show!
We’ve traverse’d close and far,
We did enter th’text laden tomes of Andalúsian lore,
We sail’d our psyches from Qeshm to Malabar
As we drank the drunkest Roman elixir,
Fore’ we eye’d the glaciers on th’northern shore.
Adamantine colossus! What new do you reveal?
Fox, steadfast stand, to guard th’glaciers that guard the land—
It’s icy tendrils wheeling round the Odin wheel—
Sphere impell’d by the Ullr guiding hand.

VII

O brother, what say you? Shall we take his warn?
Let’s leave this land, do this fox a favor
And leave th’Adamantine colossus in its Adamantine form?
Or ascend a ghost that mov’st over the glaciers?
He turns and tells “what a foolish thing!”,
“Brother, you are no slave, nor noble, but a king!”
He repell’d my chatty verse on site
With a disregard for dogma and icy spite.
Ignite! Ignite! The frost’y tranquility,
This thought move’d my most true idle phantasies,
Fore’ the hopes of Christ to my true rite.

VIII

O’ the Advent, we pass’d the Reynir as we walk’d prior,
The rocks soar’d stronger, they flew taller,
Like thickest steam that boil-boil’d the geyser,
We put one foot first upon wild ice, undetain’d
Sensational slippery tracks a slope upwards,
In air which skylarks flee and none remain’d,
It all was a dream! You could see all the worlds
By a mere step up height, lower than th’heavens,
Far aloft the havens.
Our legs sway’d being a pendulum, fall’en from sky’s high,
They swung fierce in interludes,
We hymn’d “O’, may today we die?”
“Yet have we reach’d the plucky altitudes”.

IX

Far we climb’d, the higher we heed,
Yggdrasil shiver on high,
The ancient glacial limbs grew loose;
Wear’d by two spoors, our spears struck the glacier neath”,
But we swore we slay this beast soon.

X

O’ the highest top, we yearn’d upon our search,
Jötunn, and glacial water that quench’d
Our geist far more than our thirst.
Highest peak, what a chill it was!
Highest peak, all of Ísland we saw,
We saw whence we began,
The florals, the debates! Then the advent.
O’ noon of life, we sung
On icy ground above dark black sand,
As we stood aloft things, cool and drench’d,
Things unknown to man.

–

Maxon J. Owens is an Midwestern-American poet who writes romantic literature and many poems in efforts to synthesize modernism and romanticism, often writing about naturalist and transcendental material.