In the eggshell blue above Venice, in the ice cream cloud on a park in France,

the storm abates. Even in an English meadow, where the gentry and a hound

stand puffed and proud, the weather has held – see the sugar baron

posed with a pheasant and a gun. But on through the gilded rooms,

the centuries styled in shadow and light, the gold in the straw at Lady Jane's

death, and how the upturned axe, whetted to an edge near diamond sharp,

pierces the gloom. Before the Turner with a storm now trapped in a frame,

the turbulent world at war with the sea. Note: the poor souls doomed

on a Calais pier, piling into boats that bump and jostle, the white wave flare

and the rolled up sail, the wooden hull swamped and the oarlock rattle.

And how the artist works in thick grey paint, cutting up the Channel in a squall.

What colour would you mix for a dinghy made of rubber? The life raft

ditched on a beach in Kent? It's only a brush stroke, you tell yourself, the faces

lit by panic and fear.

Calais Pier, inspired by the Turner painting, was runner up in the 2022 Wells Festival of Literature Poetry Prize