Reading the Bones

On a 10th c grave, Reykjavik museum, Iceland.

by Stephanie Green

Like a foetus waiting to be born,
she is curled on her side with bent knees.
I see her unfold herself, free
to step back through death’s door

into day-light, her bones fleshed, seventeen
again, skin limpid as blossom before
it falls. She plaits her hair tightly
then smooths the creases of her blue pinafore.

Its edging keeps alive her Celtic identity,
despite an incomer’s need to absorb
strange words, customs, history
and the dark winters when the stars seem to throb.

She wears riches: lapis lazuli
and amber beads, brooches intricately wrought
but when she opens her mouth, her teeth
speak of starvation, enamel malformed.

She will never forget she was a refugee,
five years old, fleeing famine and war.
Crushed with others, hardly able to breathe
in a trembling curragh, every oar

spiked with icicles, her stomach’s heave
plummeting the troughs, skin raw,
lashed by freezing spray and sleet,
as they headed into the unknown north.