In Iceland, where blue begets blue,
the highway makes a complete circle, like an earth
touring round a sun. Drive it and you can reach out and touch
boulder-sized blocks
of ice floating by.
Water reflects sky is reflected in the color of ice.
Before freezing, all colors are mirrored in water.
In the Blue Lagoon steam rises from water
and blues all blend together, clouding the eyes.
The lagoon began as a pool of waste water
and now sits in a lava field, complimenting the sky.
Below, people soak in mineral springs
with the look and feel of thick blue-hued milk
the geothermal power plant forgotten, like poor girl makes good.
At night, Iceland is black as Francis Bacon’s mouths.
In summer, beneath a vomit of constellations,
the lips turn blue. Some days, life is as simple
as putting on a coat when you’re cold.
Pull off the Ring Road and you can see the earth bubbling
at the surface and letting off steam. No other landscape looks
so much like lunch. Alfred Hitchcock once instructed his cook
to put blue dye in everything from soup to dessert
to observe the effect of blue on his guests.
A midnight sun dips below a pale horizon for a few hours,
rising again into blue. For half a year,
when it’s dark most of the day and there is no blue to look at,
blue must be imagined, like a mouth stuffed with dentists’ gauze
before the bleeding starts, when the absence of red is astounding.
