The Open Sea

Morning breathes a shy whisper over this black rock country. I watch as she awakens. Smiling, I feed her my warmth. Six months is too long between visits. I have missed Iceland but returned with summer.

I extend arms to the country’s ocean-side capital, Reykjavik. My rays slink along white wooden alleys and paved streets to meet a crate of free records outside a wind chime-decorated music store. I reflect whiteness against a bookshop window and trace high-rise stacks of yellowed journals inside.

Brightly-dressed people in the high street lean bicycles against open windows, browse racks of woollen jumpers and soak in my light. They know the lesson of Iceland: draw energy from nature. Fingerless rainbow gloves clutch a steaming coffee mug outside a busy bakery. Scents of coffee and pastry rush the street.

Folded mural walls open to a courtyard where an African drumming group serenades the day. Green-haired and dressed entirely in black, she sits beside an old man. They pound their drums to the same beat. I slide over red and blue rooftops. Two men joke about a volcano eruption. Cheeky thing. They walk unhurriedly into the afternoon.

I retreat to scan terrain beyond the capital: otherworldly black deserts, clouded blue pools, white mulling lava and mountains like snapped dark chocolate. Shoots of green peek through a pebbled surface. Here my companions are silence and the acid mud smell of the Earth’s intestines. My rays glisten on rushing water. It licks the saltiness of ebony sand and carries my glittering sheen to the open expanse of Reykjavik’s bay.

A fisherman captains his boat as it moves to the horizon. He is glad for the water and the sting deep in his nostrils. He knows the vertigo, the magic spell stretching evening light over twelve hours. It’s midnight and he sees me dawdling above the horizon.

Glancing flat over the sea, we greet each other as old friends. We linger a while. When my friend turns his boat around, I travel back the way I came.