Whaler's Song

On the cliffs of Ellesmere island
sits a woman, a child cradled in the folds of her skirt.
She looks out onto the spume of Merseyside Port, the whalers’ setting out to sea,
 
Ships’ belly’s weighed with gut buckets and cork-handle harpoons.
Maidenhead crowning portside, she looks out beyond the breakwater,
her eyes salted with tears, the sky sinking red into the belly of the sea.
 
Lela reaches between her legs,
the skin scalloped and salty. Lowering her head
she runs her fingers along a kop of bone, nettles of wet hair
latticed in the folds of her thighs. Moaning, she speaks to the sky
…cover me in thistle, then lay me back to sleep.

© Stephen Rowntree