Orkney Islands Poem by Jacqui Thewless

The light’s faith-keeping with the land
in those wee isles of Rousay and Egilsay -
it made the sea’s third wave’s curve, pale green; the flower’s cup,
a whiter shade than Hakon’s tower-kirk;

it frames, on one Chinese White strand, today’s
loose brushstrokes with a tide of fresh calligraphy in seaweed-inks.
Light sinks the floundered war-ships in less bloody hue
than sunset on a bluebell-blue sky’s rim.

Yet there are stark shores, where a spate of boats left home
and came in with the dawn, in floods of fishing folk -
and here, we’ve drowned the sea’s nights, brim with dark alone -
O, come the morning...