STORM SWIRLS ROUND WITHERED GROYNES... (My new poem about Sue Nichol's painting of Sandsend beach, Whitby, North Yorkshire...)

 Storm Swirls Round Withered Groynes…

(From Sue Nichol’s painting of Sandsend, Whitby, North Yorkshire…)

Pastel and cruel blues, and darker, sinister hues

Cascade upon and wrap themselves about the remnants 

And stubs of Sandsend’s battered groynes, silhouetted

Like crude, charred totem poles, their carvings

Weatherbeaten and disfigured to ugly and gnarled,

Or lightning-struck trunks of smitten trees…

Jaundiced light, like squeezed lemon, imbues

Itself into the ragged, atrocious North Sea tide, a penance

For the fair weather beach of soft sand, so feted

By expectant visitors with their seaside cravings. 

And still the rapacious ocean, its waves unfurled

Swirl round the withered posts and smother and tease…

Pete Ray…

30th October 2025… 

A dramatic painting of Sandsend beach by Sue Nichol with its splendid weathered groynes…

BELOW: images taken during my visits to Sandsend...

BLACKENED STUMPS... (My poem about Titchwell's beach, Norfolk...)

 Blackened Stumps…

Incongruous, slick, blackened stumps

Spaced quite evenly,

Strode

Into a bitter North Sea’s

Grey approach, but they

Rode

The engulfing, mist-flecked tide,

Which swirled, eddied and 

Flowed…

So reminiscent of tree stumps, 

Charred

In Passchendaele mire,

Where murky water seeped upon the bloodied and 

Scarred…

Pete Ray…

Titchwell, June 2016… 

The sea has reclaimed much of the sand dunes at Titchwell, Norfolk, but some old groyne stumps still stand, blackened, slick and harried by the sea, rather like the stumps of damaged trees in a devastated World War 1 scene… 

CARVED IN COWLS... (My poem about the carvings in All Saints Church, Weybourne, Norfolk...)

 Carved In Cowls…

Carvings on bench ends.

A bird, but slightly damaged

And a human head, female,

Two-faced, if slightly ravaged.

Cowled, features keen.

Nuns, surely? 

Skilfully turned, smooth edged

By spinster sisters.

Poppy-heads unique,

To witness, I was privileged…   

Pete Ray…

Weybourne, 2016…

Carved in 1900 by a family of wood turners and carvers, who were sisters.

The six of them: Hannah Beatrice, Mary Esther, Rose Cecily, Martha Grace, Maude Marguerita and Eleanor Bolding, are pictured below.

‘Poppy-heads’ were carved on bench-ends but many were removed during the Reformation. 

The name apparently derives from the Latin word ‘puppis’, meaning a figurehead on the poop deck of a ship.

THE VOICE & THE TWANGY GUITAR... (My poem about a Sara Evans recording...)

 The Voice & the Twangy Guitar…

The range shifts from a honey poignancy

To a rich red wine,

The melody rising

Like a clarinet, plaintive,

Then tumbling dramatically

To a tenor saxophone, thrumming.

And the breath is held

At the singer’s tendency

To stoke the soul

And render minds emotive,

As a loose twangy guitar

Plucks Duane Eddy from the past,

His riffs persistent and strumming…

Pete Ray…

Listening to Sara Evans singing ‘I Could Not Ask For More’, I couldn’t help thinking of Duane Eddy’s twangy guitar on songs like ‘Dance With the Guitar Man’ but then when I heard the new song by the artist, ‘Marquee Sign’, the way her voice dropped to a rich deep sound made me want to write about the two things…

UPTON WARREN & ITS BIRDS, WORCESTERSHIRE, 27TH OCTOBER 2025...