The surface of an alien planet
Frozen in a thick fleece of snow.
Black dots of lava
Stretch into stark desolation,
A blizzard of white
Smothering grass
Decorating trees
Flat and lifeless like the
Surface of the moon.
Jagged pieces of snowy glass
Pierce the cratered surface.
Sheer, white-peppered mountains
Puncturing the sky, calm and grey
As the land, so that
It’s not easy to find the horizon
If it exists.
Then like mirages they appear,
Around a rocky corner,
Smooth and tumbling waterfalls
Plummeting with a roar
Into icy pools, then snakes away
Like a frozen dragon
Off to find its lair.
But it treads into the path of
A dragon of fire, and from their fight
Great plumes of smoke
Explode roaring from the depths
And bathe the land in
Endless fog.
When at last the watery dragon
Finds the ocean,
Its fury whips up waves
Roaring and rolling towards the shore
Like an ancient army
Out for vengeance,
Clawing at the sand,
Rising high in might and
Thundering down like a symphony,
Unceasing in rumbling noise.
A constant battlefield
Between the land and sea.
The wind howls bitterly at the stars,
Buffets at all in its path
A cruel and biting cold
Rubbing skin raw, stinging eyes
And the weather turns
Like a merry-go-round.
Flurries of snow descend from heaven,
Thick drops tossed around
By the playful wind,
The world blurring into
A mass of raining foam.
The next morning all the snow
Has melted, icy footprints
Vanished into the air.
The calm before the storm
Is like a dam about to burst.
Heaven’s showerhead
Torments mercilessly
The wind dances in joyful fury
White the sun hides in bed.
[Written 26/12/16 in Reykjavik]
under unclouded stars 