Iceland Calling

I am in love with Iceland.


I fell in love with Iceland even before my trip in 2007, before I stepped off the plane and felt the jagged rocks crunch under my boots, before I breathed the crackling, ion-scented air, before I gazed across moss-covered plains broken only by a volcanic horizon.


I fell in love with Iceland when it was merely a finger-tip dot on a map. I fell in love with it through the words of this man, William Jon Holm, poet and essayist. Sadly, I have just learned that Mr. Holm is no longer with us. But his words and his life remind me of why I'm here doing this thing I do. Because if there is the slightest chance--the slightest chance--that my life will be as rich as his, well... it will be a life worth living.


I will leave you, then, with an excerpt from one of his poems, of which, unfortunately, I have only this snippet copied out of a book I borrowed years ago. I came across the notepaper I had scribbled it down on and it reminded me that I had wanted a copy of that book for myself. Another book for my wishlist, and another destiny for my dreams.




Excerpt from "The Icelandic Language"


In an air conditioned room you cannot understand the grammar of this language,


The whirring machine drowns out the soft vowels,


But you can hear these vowels in the mountain wind


And in heavy seas breaking over the hull of a small boat.


Old ladies can wind their long hair in this language


And can hum, and knit, and make pancakes.


But you cannot have a cocktail party in this language,


It is so heavy you can't be polite and chatter in it.


For once you have begun a sentence, the whole course of your life is laid out before you,


Every foolish mistake is clear, every failure, every grief,


Moving around the inflections from case to case and gender to gender,


The vowels changing and darkening, the consonants softening the tongue


Til they are the sound of a gull's wings fluttering


As he flies out of the wake of a small boat drifting out to open water.


~William Jon Holm