The Grey…
(Inspired by Sarah Ball’s painting…)
The silence gnawed at my resolve,
Prodding at my erstwhile mettle
And I was thus unnerved, my valour perturbed,
Yet I stood my ground as expected,
Just a number in the fodder
That was infantry…
The greyness bleached at the woods,
Invoking a spectral sparsity
But I was quite alert, my senses pert,
Thus I stood my ground as instructed,
A dispensable number in the waste
That was infantry…
A whistle blew.
And hampered by equipment
But by a tot of rum fired,
My expendable frame
Scrambled from a forward trench
Towards the charred, scarred landscape.
Then shells flew
Through smoke’s spew,
Disorientating, exasperating
And soon bodies lay askew.
Yet this number plodded on
Until a shallow crater was in view,
Into which my bleeding body I threw
And I lay, alone, one of a meagre few.
Alive, within The Grey,
Afraid beneath a stripped, blanched tree
I suffered the lot reserved
For the infantry…
Pete Ray…
A poem written after looking at Sarah Ball’s painting which features grey and trees…
The landscape made me think of World War One.
And I was in it.
And I was replaceable.
I was, after all, infantry…
The thoughts of independent source, The Sand Martin...
'One is immediately drawn to the foreground by the white and light grey tree trunks. An area of red colouring almost mid-centre on a tree trunk led me to consider this painting as an allegory of a human day. The impactful shading of grey and brown in horizontal wavy stripes around the trees made
me think of the brain going through patterns of activity throughout a day.
I imagined starting the day with the trees representing numbers of bright sparking ideas and thoughts trying to negotiate the miasma of browns and make their way through the background brain chatter as one awakes.
The vertical trees seemed as if clever ideas and thoughts sparking through the dull mind and petering out towards the tops of the trees as the trunks became increasingly thinner and the brain more tired.
I felt the trees outlined in black ink represented the most pertinent ideas and thoughts, whereas the fainter, paler trees appearing more ghost like, perhaps represented our more obscure and random
thoughts.
The horizontal river of white light represented to me a time of clarity, though becoming hazy to the point of darkening with the brain becoming quieter as ideas and thoughts become less intrusive, leading to sleep as the day ends.
Whatever thoughts and ideas this painting evokes there is a mystical, almost magical feel as one looks through the mist. We see a beautifully constructed natural scene delicately coloured with a limited palette that imbues a sense of peace and calm...'
