Words written upon waking

Still working on getting back to transcribing the rest of my Iceland journals (there are four days left, most of them in Reykjavík)–revising Bones sort of brought me to a halt. It’s really part of the larger process of learning how to continue writing one book while going through the production process on another. (Could I have kept working on TE while revising Bones? I don’t know–I’m an immersion sort of writer, and tend to focus on one project at a time–but I’m going to try to at least put in some time on TE when the copyedits for Bones arrive.)

In the meantime, these rough, unpolished words were written in my journal while we were in the West Fjords, though I didn’t include them in my trip reports at the time (not unlocked, anyway–I may have posted them locked while in Iceland)–on a morning a little more than a week into the trip, when I was feeling awash in story and folklore and fog.

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There was a man
His name’s not written down
But it happened right here
No, not there
Here
This rock
This pool
This stream
In these hills where babies must not be left unguarded
And a homeless priest blessed the hidden waters
And elves hide under rocks
And trolls within stones
These green and gray hills
Where the fog moves over the valley
Though the sky above is blue
Here
In these hills
In this place
There was a man
There was a story

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Gulls circle the
Fog-cloaked mountain
Of the missing sorcerer

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Up here at the end of the world
The children play with old bones
Eat too much sugar
Stay up until midnight