The Vikings at Dundrum Bay, Northern Ireland

By Adam Gibson ©

the tide floods this bay which local
history believes saw the deaths of

1200 Vikings in the misty howl of legend as
seabirds tear the sky apart outside the full

windows and the sound you hear, they say,
across the bay is not the wind or the far away

sound of breaking waves but it's the Viking longships
running aground on shoal beaches and the whistle of

wind is the screams of drowning men
so I sleep with earplugs rammed in tight against the night

as I don't want to hear them, don't want to hear a thing,
and as morning light arrives long past the beginning of day,

I know that the screams and shouts I heard in dreams
have not been heard for hundreds of years or more.