A Poem by Taylor Strickland

Where God After Finishing His Work Shook His Hands Clean

for Øyvind Rangøy

Along single-lane road
to road’s end, things run
amuck: seawrack and
pine spiking through pink

heathery lack the way
today’s third visitor arrives,
reverses after collecting
dilettante collateral,

silver birch clinging
to rock, sjarker docked
in wait, photographed,
captured: island as object

not environment, place.
Here a fisherman’s cast is
a line at snapping point.
Sons, daughters balance

their wave-born haul,
the slow bringing-in of it,
always coupled with
truce retreating like tide,

like inheritance. Islanders
talk fondly of origins, how
God’s work was finished
with one thunderous

shake of his hands: flung
debris, skerries starring seas.
This place was finished from
the start, is what that means.

Note: this poem was written during my time at Rangøya Residency and is about the island of Rangøya in Norway.

Taylor Strickland is a poet and translator. His newest book is Dares Paradise (Princeton University Press, 2026).