Jökulsárlón

They wake and uncurl
in the yellow yolk
of their tent. Lazily she unzips
its shuddering brown shell.
So cool to feel
the ground-shaking groans
of high, fracturing ice
crumpling and falling backwards,

chunks peppering the lake
like meteorites, each arcing
its white weight of water
up and out. But camping
beside the glacier is not allowed.
It would, they were told,
be like sleeping in a fridge -
that cold, that noisy.

I tell you those bruise-purples
and livid aquamarines,
and every lumped-coal black
of the ice-floes
they watched being born
reminded them we are born
in full-on technicolour;
are smacked alive.

And every cut of the cold's blade,
each drifting colossus,
each lace-worked wind-carving,
gave hope and shape
to their minds' imaginings
and their breathings'
glitter-clouds. So tell me this -
whose heart would not curl

to a proud fist and beat here?
Whose lungs dare do
anything other than flower?
Here where the world,
tripping over itself,
flings out such shocks of colour
and torn-off cascades of sound
that we are transcended -

like those lovers who
rolled out their sleeping mats
at the foot of Glacier Vatnajökull,
by the glacial lagoon
called Jökulsárlón
where blood and love,
they were told,
would freeze over.

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