HOMEWARD

HOMEWARD, by Scott T. Hutchison, pending Audio by Karen Menzel

We muscle against wayward powers raging
against us, pull our oars–this time into a soul-stealing
quiet of vapors. Navigation is something none of us
mumbles about. We sorely breathe the mist. Six
grey-day passages since the storm that rained
and wracked us. Illuminated dances of lightning,
one serpent-spiraling hotly down our mast.

At first we thought we’d made fair, costly escape.
Hewn wood and sail fire. But mercifully doused, finally,
by waves the storm itself tasted and spat upon us. Men
burned and splintered and drowned. When calm returned

the five of us remained alive. Now we pull, two
on either side, Rotate the fifth man to keep watch
and sleep. Our charred half-ship somehow remaining afloat.
We pull against visions of the small harbor village
our full band ventured forth to raid, against recalling
how our numbers thinned when women
skillfully nocked arrows from perches in the trees,
bolstering the sharpened defense of their homes.

Deadly women. A piercing and bloody death for thirteen men
screaming forward, our axes halted as they battered into
a ditch-rising wall of shields and spears. Then appeared that
questionable mercy: the sky tore wide, dark clouds unleashing
angry cover, allowing us torrential escape.

But, as we lashed ourselves to the oars, seeking
far-away home in this newest violent fray, the wave-rolls
washed a man over the side. We held fast, rowing madly
as crashing swells carried a toothy beast from the opposite side
across our laps, following him. We prayed to our fickle gods,
careless branches of lightning cracking in their smiling teeth.

What’s left of us will pull. Home again, we pull—toward
sons, daughters, widows and wives we will embrace
with urgency to take up the long bow more earnestly.
Strong sweet drink. We feel the pull. Bend
our pummeled backs to it. This fog will pass.

 

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Scott T. Hutchison’s work has appeared in Vestal Review, , The Raven’s Review, and Star*Line.  New work is forthcoming in Mobius, Bristol Noir, The Thieving magpie, and Baltimore Gothic.