It will all work out okay

Once I hiked partway up a glacier

on the other side of a dust storm

just north of Vik

far off

I could see the sandy fields & the shaggy horses

that roamed them

could see the seams of their breath lifting

little signals into the weep of it all

I was someone else

back then

someone maybe not even lonely

Back then

I stood for a long time

before the waterfall that broadcast

its white in a rush of lace

The tour group was full

of complaints

around the next scheduled departure

At the Blue Lagoon

I watched strangers

at a bachelorette party take shots

of vodka from tiny plastic cups

& toast the bride-to-be in her white bikini

Just like anywhere

or the moon

& back then

I was full of my own brand of laziness & shorthand

desire

to get close to something

life-changing & majestic

without working very hard for it

Everywhere

I looked something was coming alive

in dramatic fashion

a glimmer in the ache

of the cape of ice that glazed everything over

those months of little daylight

the dusk kept folding

its lava fields into

a syntax

of evening

It was beautiful

It made me

smaller