Landkjenning.
32 days on a Longship on a journey
that was meant to be a short
in 1052 during just another year of
Odin’s conquests by our blades
but we float Mast less, in this leaking vessel,
our massive sail in tatters with holes
too numerous, burned through its massive surface
from flaming arrows launched
Thus we endure a much smaller sail
pieced and knotted together
from our clothes to what rigging
and lines we have left
but it barely catches the wind
With only three men left to
man the oars of twenty-four
and 12 men left far too badly injured
from the battle we fought
our navigation is tenuous at best.
We fought bravely and boldly
but we were outnumbered and
overwhelmed as they lay
siege to our craft
but many of them also float face
down in the icy sea. and thus
they fled from our fervor.
10 of our dead lie at peace
in the depths of the Baltic Sea
with no flaming pyres to send them off
and no boats to cradle
our most noble warriors
I am but one of the three who
remain starving and extremely thirsty
with all our supplies exhausted,
for the journey planned had not
required stocking much.
but that choice has left us down to
consuming our own urine and soon
our bodies will be depleted of even that.
Only fish blood and rainwater caught
have kept us strong this long
but the fish have gone scarce
and the sun has burned for days now
a furnace till we have become
the roasted flesh that we each crave for.
Even the bodies of our enemies
stored and then dragged aboard
fresh from the frigid sea
and dried in the blazing sun,
has been sliced free of all
useable flesh and meat
and devoured by all who were
still breathing days ago when
all of our stock of any food was gone
The taste of one’s enemy is sweetened
by victory but this was no triumph.
We are a floundering vessel
holding three who are not hearty
and 12 who are dying slowly….but inevitably.
On this longboat I long for a view of the shore,
any shore but the endless waves mock
such possibilities for us all.
This boat will become perhaps
our own coffins, a mausoleum for 15 corpses
sinking slowly into oblivion forever.
I lay down my weary bones
my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth
two useless, bone dry, appendages
and my gut is wrenched with the pain
of my body consuming what little
fat and muscle I have left.
Night eventually falls once more
and the silence aboard is only broken by
the sighs of men dying from their wounds
dying...dying from their wounds
