The Safe Harbour

Flora MacDonald died at Kingsburgh on Skye, in the same bed in which Bonny Prince Charlie had slept.

The crossing

Decanted from the vessel of the corset
the would-be immortal sheds his strange armour
to sleep, and round his body wraps the foreign sheet.

Loosened, his flesh takes the form of the bed.
A new ship, her maiden voyage.
The crossing is a good one, seas smooth as linen,
crews civil as machinery.
At daybreak he hits solid land
with the screaming of the hull against the rocks

and the striking of clocks.
For a moment he is forgotten
and then he finds his feet, where he had
neglected to take them off, in his haste.

 

Flora/Fauna

Mice droppings and bloodstains. There is
much that once lived; animal presence in her bed.

The sharps of goosefeather and fingernail.
Breathing of horses that comes to men with sleep.

Colourless lifemasks of spiders, brief as silk.
Miscellaneous cells strewn like petals on a wedding day.

Pressed beetles light and dulled as paper.
Bugs fattened on the warmth of sleeping weight.

Courtesy of lavender left on the pillow like hair,
to drive out the smells of this world.

 

Flora, on her deathbed

she thinks the bed is narrowing
but then that it is only
the swelling of the wave beneath
that will carry her over
if only it does not take her under

the little bed is buoyant
she is singing like a sailor
and her hair has shaken free of its roots
like a flower on water