Whale Station - resubmission

This is an unhappy place,
specters from a brutal time
stalk the stony shores.
Nature has tried to heal the wounds
with saplings and vine while the Sitka spruce trees
stride away from the memories
into damp darkness.

Only stone stands firm,
here a flight of mossy steps to nowhere,
there sea weedy pillars supporting
nothing more than birds
where slip-way or haul-up once waited
for the flenchers and the lacerated giants to arrive.

Foundations and broken walls are just traces
of bunkhouse, rendering shed or bone crusher.
Wood has rotted to a feeling,
ghostly broken shapes worn to the core
by weather and time.
Iron hulks lie here too, rusted red,
memories of the blood spilt. On my hands
it smells of death, geologic,
ancient.

I long to leave this haunted place
and yet it holds me here
in the sun and seabird cries.
Out to the placid sea, away from the sadness
a smooth, dark back arches
out of the dappled swell
sighing sanctuary once more.