Ships Passing - Rosemary Parrott

In my teens I used sit at my bedroom window on the hill near the Castel Church at night, watching the pinpricks of light that marked the movement of shipping along the horizon: cargo ships with their collection of lights at one end and a masthead light at the other, and cruise ships, not so many in those days, with a row of lights from stem to stern and between the masts, not dreaming that I would ever have the chance to go on one myself.

Several times now I’ve seen the caption on the cabin screen `You are now entering the Casquets gyratory system’, as if it were a roundabout on some motorway, and gone up on deck to watch as I go past Guernsey. I watch the row of lights in the distance and wonder if there is another restless teenager sitting at that window, watching my light creeping along the horizon and longing to be free.

My poem, 'Ships passing', is included in my most recent book 'Lanterns in Wet Leaves' which has just been published.

Ships Passing - Rosemary Parrott

No moon,
Hardly any stars;
A row of dark oaks
Stand firm before
The window,
Giant prison bars
Causing me to cry:
“Let me go,”-
But silently,
Inside my head,
So that no-one else will know.

Distant pinpricks of light
Inch their way
Along the edges of the sky:
Green ones
On their way to England,
Red, bound for
The Bay of Biscay
And beyond;
While in systematic round,
The lighthouse
Combs its corner
Of the night
With rhythmic,
Bright
Sweeping finger.

Rosemary Parrott