Greenland

            I thank God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the 
            blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

            E.E. Cummings

I view the ripe rind of the ice-capped isle from the foreign deck, silent, bleak peaks, dusty brown rock strewn with mangy growth stretch to water’s edge, where whispering shallows shelter bright sapphire mussels, perhaps to be snatched by sharp-eyed gulls that screech over olive green granite ledge. Cowered by cut-glass glacier whose calves melt to mounds of emerald mosses, seen by those who care to seek. Snowy bog cotton, pink young lasses, daises dressed in Sunday best, blazes of buttercups, blueberries, minty pixie cups, budding birch, baby blue hare bell, round red heath, and blankets of orange lichen that will crack ancient slate-grey boulders, at glacial speed.

Crystal waterfalls trace shadowy clefts that ribbon to rivers, feed sweet angelica and spicy arctic thyme, lavender labrador leaves brew weathered dreams in rainbows of bright homes. Villages of fisherman mine gold from the sea through salt spray in shimmering light of endless day as did sage Inuit whalers in tanned skin qajaq, taming white-capped waves that harbor ivory-tusked walrus, humpback, minke, narwhal cruising in cold arctic waters as I leave the land’s deep, diverse, and peaceful shades of green.
 

Cathy Hollister is the author of Seasoned Women, A Collection of Poems published by Poet’s Choice. When not writing you might find her on the dance floor enjoying the company of friends or deep in the woods basking in the peace of solitude. A 2024 Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has been in Eclectica Magazine, Canyon Voices, Burningword Literary Journal, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. She lives in middle Tennessee; find her online at www.cathyhollister.com