For almost a millennium,

when all their deeds that would be done were done,

the island brought its people here to bury them.

Now, fifty years since mourners sang their final sorrows,

the chapel’s wooden roof has fallen in on generations of loss.

In the graveyard, bones bed shallowly on carboniferous rocks

and, above, flat gravestones announce each life’s scant details.

The bones beneath are grown by this island;

cartilage scaffolds new growth, tissues grow longer and wider

until collagen ossifies, for a first short life, in flesh

anticipating a longer second life in Cill Cheannannach,

where each bone waits beneath its chosen stone.