FAULTLINES OF THE BODY AT THINGVELLIR

The ground slopes downward
into the fissured ravine,
featureless blue above
spiked with spindly sunbeams
like femurs, vertebrae, collarbones
sucked clean of meat.

Bone on bone, my knees
grind into spurs, I go deeper
between the rock walls,
they grow taller above me,
dirty-booted, I am between continents.

Each side mirroring,
left and right, like the ribcage
twinning at the sternum
and the butterfly wings of the pelvis,
but the rough rock is speckled
with white lichen spawning
slowly over its dark basalt.

Here, above the sea

in air

plates tear apart quietly, patiently—
the North American goes west,
Eurasian goes east,
creeping 2.5 cm/year.
At times, they get anxious,
ground lurches, crevices crack
through bedrock, pent-up
energy, pressure of
rocks, ribs, lovers.

GIFT FROM REYNISFJARA

Ocean waves slap into the tall basalt,
cave columns rise out of the black beach
like a hexagonal Pantheon for sea gods.

High sunlight forges ocean silver
as if everything is precious, metal,
mathematically holy.

Bring me a rock, he asked.
I look for one—size of a rosebud,
an infant’s heart, an ice cream scoop.

An infinite number
of stones stretch across my horizon.
They breathe and pray,
air and light, in and out, in and out.
Each rock’s vesicles now empty for eons
of Earth’s mantle-womb poison.

I imagine the explosions and rifts,
the fissures bleeding to form
a molten Eden.
Lava flows into the Atlantic
like tongues or tentacles,
Iceland’s everchanging perimeter.

As I’m watching tourists
posture for selfies, hear shoe-crunch
of strolls on black rocks,
I remember people die
every year on this beach.

But against the tour guide’s advice
all of us go
—backs to water—
to what is about to happen,
in some other ocean, firth, sea, strait.
A wave builds in the beyond.

Claudine R. Moreau teaches physics and astronomy at Elon University in North Carolina. She is the author of Demise of Pangaea [Main Street Rag, 2024]. She is already failing at old age as she has no skills in knitting, pickleball, or birdwatching. She does excel in housecleaning, clumsiness, and stargazing.