intimacy with the earth.

By Shannon Carr

Emerging Writers Poetry

Photo by Christian Weibel

in Iceland, 

little islands of unearthed soil collide;

eager dirt-y igloos,

illuminate the deep green earth.

in Iceland, 

unbalanced mixtures

of water and soil

make dirt-y tangible love

to each other. 

since the deepest greens and browns,

intend to interlock the island;

the intersection of ice and earth interrupts soil,

as a witness to the homes of clay.

in Iceland,

clay can be sediments smaller than silt.

clay can create copious crafts;

yet, in Iceland, 

the soil can be baked. 

brought to a boil to build bricks. 

not bricks of ice and snow, 

but block-y brown bricks;

and these clay earthlings

create and sustain life

outside of earth's intentions; 

and is this not joyous?

since life from soil and water

is interpreted as infrastructure, 

for its imaginative and transformative nature:

can you and i

take on the trouble

of withstanding worldly needs?

since you and i

mold earth into

another form of itself

for ourselves. 

in Iceland, 

is it not insane, 

how earth becomes unearthed to be earth still?

and is it not unthinkable,

how humans resist turning into

raw and unbridled forms

of themselves? 

at the end of the earth, 

Iceland is the home for dirty earthlings;

because earthborn-beings are bound to be beautiful. 

---

Shannon Carr, a desert dweller, grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada. Carr is a rhetoric and philosophy student specializing in the environment. When she isn't writing about landscapes, she is painting them. This is her first publication.