COOK STRAIT IN A STORM

it’s in a storm. The wind is gale force; the rocks sharp and dangerous. How quickly things can change! On a calm day you can paddle about in a kayak. In a storm like this nobody puts to sea.

One of my poems, Storm, relates to a seascape like this – in all its dangerous magnificence!

Storm

Sea birds, sentinels, fleeing the black storm brewing in the Strait cry out their warnings what’s up ahead:

the rising wind

the stinging sand

the bone-chilling rain the lightning-strikes: the beach a killing zone?

The soul says:

Shall we see light?

Torrents wash us clean?

Wind blow through our mind?

Shall we know ourselves the storm over and gone? The beach still, the sea calm rainbow preaching peace? Shalôm?

This can serve as a metaphor for life: when storms blow up, they can, as the poem suggests, bring whole new perspectives on life – hopefully for good.

Or be our undoing.

Here in NZ/Wellington my daughter-in-law is about to give birth to her first child, a son. In England my brother David has just recently died. And much else.

As we come through all such things, will whole new perspectives open up for us? That, roughly, is what the poem is about.

I hope this rings bells for the reader. In any event, the poems in Heartscapes are about exploring real life.

Our word ‘poetry’ comes from the greek poisesis which means something made or an artefact. In one way, that’s what a poem is. But it also asks us what we make of life. Does it have beauty and meaning – like a poem?

Raymond Pelly, Wellington, NZ

9 July 2021

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