Port Ban Iona
(A new poem written whilst looking at Jane Askey’s painting of the same name…)
The ocean’s capricious anger,
As black as rocks,
Yet teased by fusses of white surf,
Spills to blue, then a temperate aqua
To ooze, ease and reach
And infiltrate a hard, damp, sandy beach,
Creeping, stealing, sucking and feeling,
Like an evil spectral finger
With a sinister need to linger
There and penetrate, beneath harsh cloud
Which harries and mocks…
Stranded on the shore are dark strands of weed,
Anticipating their impending salty immersion:
String-like fronds, scribbling signatures to read,
Before a cold sea intensifies its coercion
Of this detritus, this scrawny creed,
Dragging, swirling, sagging and curling,
Furling, lifting, unfurling and drifting,
To feed a lusting ocean’s insatiable greed…
Pete Ray
March 2019
A dramatic painting by Jane Askey in which the sea pushes between dark rocks like it has been squeezed from a tube.
Seaweed was always loathsome to me as a kid, hating the way it clung to my ankles and feet when I paddled in the sea.
Older twin cousins chased me with strands of it.
The tendrils on this painting seem like scrawls in the sand, as they await the sea’s ghastly hunger…
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