ON THE ROAD TO MOUSEHOLE: my new poem about an image from the National Geographic magazine, December 1924...)

 On The Road To Mousehole…

(From an old image which featured in the National Geographic magazine, December 1924…)

A flat-capped pipe smoker poses, silhouetted by the sea

And a woman wearing a white apron hauls a heavy bag 

Over her shoulder, full of fish perhaps, along the narrow lane

Which ‘tween Newlyn and Mousehole meanders and undulates. 

Barely wide enough to accommodate one cart, or vehicle,

The route looks remote and yet it is clearly worn.

St Clement’s Island and the land’s rock-strewn promontory are clearly visible

And luggers lie anchored in the bay, beyond the safety of the quay…

I walk the road from Newlyn to Mousehole, as a rippling sea

 Moves westward as a sun-shaft, a celestial stripe appears to drag

Itself across the coastline shadows, daring fussy clouds to spill rain

Upon the harbour, which hides just ahead and silently awaits

The local bus and tourists to visit its Christmas lights, so magical,

 Which in daylight seem scorned, weatherbeaten and forlorn.

St Clement’s Island hunches offshore, its roosting gulls restless and audible

But no luggers lie anchored in the bay these days, nor inside the quay…   

Pete Ray

6th January 2025…    

Wanted to try to find a similar place on the road from Newlyn to Mousehole when I was there, 16th-20th December 2024, 100 years on from the National Geographic magazine’s image…

Seems the original image was taken from near the Penlee Lifeboat Station, or what is now the Penlee Caravan park, where I stay in June each year.

The caption about tin being mined in Mousehole for Hiram of Tyre to supply Solomon for the Temple of Jerusalem is a curious one…