Moss separates boulders mote by dust mote, patiently,
persistently, hardly hurrying except just before a final
long sunset in freezing dark winter.
Lava rocks bubble into stone lumps, difficult for walkers.
I’m off by centuries and go back to the green pastures
aged to fertility for wooly sheep
wobbling away from Iceland’s
Main Hwy 1 at their own pace.
We travel at ours to waterfalls, black beaches,
field trenches bordering hay baled bundles.
Moss moves to mulch, to topsoil, to birches
no taller than shrubs. All white trunks bend to breezes,
leaves barely turn green to deathly rusted veins,
just before equinox. Gray has many shades,
touches of blue, red or green. All are displayed throughout
cloud covered skies, blocking and dispersing sunlight
across icy waters and froth, creating
a dome from glacier to ocean of hundreds of grays.
The kindness and gentleness of death blankets lands,
first sanded, then flooded, then covered in cooling
lava boulders, that will soon be moss covered.
In a few centuries all will be newer, older.
