RAINFALL                                                          

‘What’s the weather like?’
‘It’s raining.’
What type of rain?
I know precipitation
In all of its guises,
And you need to be aware,
Prepared.

Is it honest rain?
The straight, umbrella-fair
Puddle-spit type?
Or does it sneak round you,
Aided and abetted
By the wind, to drench
Behind your knees?

Or is it travelling rain,
Born on swift squalls,
Whipped round corners and walls
So that there’s really
No point to a parapluie?

Or perhaps the war-like wet,
Staccato machine-gun rattle
Spattering off slate sills;
But, generous to a fault,
Making a good job of
Cleaning the windows?

Or maybe it’s soft Cornish mist?
(Or Scots or Irish-delete if you insist)
No, it won’t be that today
Or else you’d say ‘It isn’t raining’.
And, walking out, we would be
Deliciously
Soaked in seconds.

  Steph Haxton             7/1/14 

On a Ship's Bridge 1978
1am: deep blackout alleviated by an eerie glow: green radar, cowled, protecting night vision. Four individuals deliberate, wait: Third mate; tense, the Captain delegated this responsibility to him. Deck cadet; smug, he's already faced this trial. The A.B; wary, someone else is doing his job - steering a 25,000 ton tanker. At night. Around some of the most congested sea-lanes of Britain. Around Land’s End.

And the fourth; a supernumerary neither passenger nor seafarer, a young woman poised at the helm, completes her steering ticket, the seaman's driving test.
‘Steer 185’repeated back. Forty minutes later, ‘Steer 090 ’ Repeat it back.
And with Wolf Rock astern on the port  side the job's done. Certificate passed. 
Where is that young woman now? Here.

SJH March 2014