Wednesday, 1 November 2023

PORTHTOWAN, CORNWALL... TWO POEMS FROM 2018: 'PORTHTOWAN STONE SEAL...' & 'THE GODDESS ON PORTHTOWAN BEACH..'.

 Porthtowan Stone Seal… 



It was as if a basking seal

Had been petrified

By the emergence of Medusa

From the Atlantic’s spewed surf

And turned to stone,

Stratified…


And there it sprawled, real,

Yet unreal, lapidified;

A guardian of Porthtowan

‘Gainst the sea’s hideous tides

And aloof in stone,

Mortified…


Pete Ray 



Rock formation looking like a seal, basking, at Porthtowan, Cornwall…



The Goddess On Porthtowan Beach… 



She had been carved in a cliff-face

By an ancient Egyptian stonemason, 

Surely?

Her hippopotamus and feline features

Left leering at tides,

The swollen belly sculpted and stylistically designed…


And thus the goddess Taweret served in this foreign place,

As a sentinel, a bastion, 

Certainly.

For the secrets of millennia she invariably hides,

This pregnant deity, beautifully refined…


Pete Ray



The angle of the exposed cliff-face took my eye and I could see Taweret somehow, the pregnant Egyptian goddess usually associated with protection and childbirth.


She was part hippo’, part lion and part crocodile, all creatures feared by the ancient Egyptians…



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