Rockall

 Shipwrecked on Rockall

Alone to my doom

The woodchips of my broken vessel lay waste

in the water below

My body lifts and falls

Cleaving to stone

too steep to climb

waists and legs uselessly float

in the water below

The gulls fly above

laughing at me

They know my fate

But still they mock me,

"Why don't you just fly?"

Would that my skin were thick 

like the masters say 

I would swim these wicked waves

 and leave this place behind

Solitude and lonesome,

Platform of a tiny place!

A claim stake for the sake of claim

like colonizer's do.

Pressed far beyond mother home and long forgotten

this solitary Rockall.

Large enough for a woman to die slowly

To whither in wait for a ship

that will never come

from a cruel and silent, stoic, English horizon