Above the Terraces

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Terraced rice fields, Yunnan Province, China: photo by Jialiang Gao, 2003

From the flat overhead view the pieces
finally begin to fit together in a way
that makes sense, the way what you knew
and what you know, just before the end,
fold into one another, as it all falls apart, 
the compartments flooded, so that
the one terraced rice field may, in the flow
dynamic, counterbalance the course 
of another. So geometrically
perfect yet so gentle the process really
and for that matter so old, the banked rows slanting
and tilting along the hillsides in lovely
sinuous patterns, with ponds between,
just as one imagines it was long ago.

Jökulsárlón, glacial lake in Iceland, situated at the south end of the glacier Vatnajökull between Skaftafell National Park and Höfn. Appearing first only in 1934-1935, the lake grew from 7.9 km² in 1975 to over 18 km² due to heavy melting of the Icelandic glaciers. Jökulsárlón is now the second deepest lake in Iceland with nearly 200 m in depth. To the right, the mouth of the glacier Vatnajökull can also be seen: photo by Kenny Muir, 2006