Yours Truly 2016 / Cascadia College / Bothell, WA | Page 54

“ oh , corpse , rest in peace ”
What were these kings fighting for ? One side of the island against the other ? Red shirts against blue , give me your goddamn sheep ?
In Kirkwall on Christmas Day , the men chase a football from the highest point in town down to the quays , tripping each other , bucking on the shale and sandstone pavement . They round the cathedral , which tips leeward and crumbles into seashells . My boots sink in shells and pebbles , dodging the flight of headless men , fishing nets , footballs . Pitched , myself , against the town , I hurl through the cathedral doors and land panting under the memorial plaques .
More dead in the walls . Images carved in deep grooved lines . A rank-haired woman crouched fierce in prayer . Her hair flows and lifts like kelp . In runic script her supplication : oh , corpse , rest in peace . The children have washed off the shore . The seals have taken them , the selkies . The men are gone to the Artic , to the white ocean gone .
This death-mask , marbled , mustachioed , belongs to a scientist . Three times he returned from the Pole . First his baby toes fell off . Next his index finger , from pointing to the stars without his gloves , and finally an ear had to be cut . Called to London to deliver an address , sent to Princeton , overshadowed by the American , Perry : the fourth time he ventured to that perfect North he didn ’ t come back at all . The death-mask is a fabrication . Oh , corpse , rest in peace . The woman on the tombstone is

52 not his wife . He never married . None of the women are wives . They are grave-mourners ,

“ oh , corpse , rest in peace ”

land-locked , seaweed in their hair , and there is a stretch of sea between them and their men .
I head back to Kirkwall Lane , watching the clouds ink the house-fronts and pass like avoiding spirits . Reflections of clouds speckle to the sheep down in their flat green pastures . Reflections of sheep speckle the clouds .
Behind the black iron gate in the cathedral yard , the bride and groom are stiff for the wedding picture . Their families , bright in flapping taffeta , swarm behind the man with the tripod . Girls are chattering and holding down their straw hats in the wind . The men are roaring a song and not agreeing on the lyrics , but the picture will show only the bride and groom in a cup of silence , dark hair , blue eyes shining like wedding china .
The harbor-master stands on the beach . His house sits squinty-eyed on the end of the sea wall . He has not been to the mainland for twenty years , one hour south by ferry . This is what he remembers : the HMS Belfast steaming out of the harbor for the Normandy beaches . These are public memories . Even before that , the defeated German flotilla scuttled in Scapa Bay , the gaunt blackened noses of ships pointing toward heaven , all else submerged below .