GILLIAN JANSEN'S PICTURE & MY POEM: 'THE NIGHT, THE COLD, THE EXPECTANCY'...

 The Night, The Cold, The Expectancy…

(from the artwork by Gillian Jansen)

Starlight reflects those white-tipped waves, restless

Within the harbour, shivering and feckless,

Quivering in the expectation 

 Of an imminent squally night;

The cowled moon’s pallid lustre beams cold

Over cottages hunching in wait, harmless,

Their lit windows promising warmth, or salvation…

The line of fairy lights, incongruous and slightly mocking,

Decorate a solitary, reposing vessel, gently rocking,

Before the wiles of the weather rouse and unfold,

And the cat stirs and the gull takes flight…

Pete Ray

October 2020

The calmness aboard the boat, with cat and gull content with their own company, the lustrous blueness and those cottage lights I want to place my hands inside, all add up somehow to a wintry mood of ‘the calm before the storm’…