I, Wanderer
dawn a pink suggestion
above snow-capped
volcanic Hekla rising
above the steely lake
black-inked
free to use the materials
with love & respect
arced across the artists’ supply cabinet
perpendicular to the building-length
plate glass window facing east
I drift into my hermit disposition
to sketch a trail map
in my writing journal –
ancestral
peregrination
tangential
riven
plea
refuge
suture
revival
pigment
wallow
vaporizing –
and I see these words
interlock and share
common boundaries
like puzzle pieces
Iceland’s volcanic earths
of crystalline greens blues
purples rusts blacks
invitations to the wanderer
responding to a charting
on tawny paper
bits of the loner
who walked on
a churning land churned
from strata to lava
to ash-blanketed ice
so deeply settled
like the shadow
following my child self
who explored the woods
alone
and the trailprints
still ahead
Michael G. Smith, Bozeman, MT, is a chemist. His poetry has been published in many literary journals. His books include No Small Things and Flip Flop, a collection of haiku co-written with Miriam Sagan. His poem Disturbance Theory. Glacier was selected to be photographed and displayed in Antarctica in early 2021 by the Antarctic Poetry Exhibition https://www.antarcticpoetry.com/. He does volunteer work at the local food bank, and at a school and orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal.
See more of his work in 9.2 and 9.2