Crossing, by Rena Ong

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, by Rembrandt van Rijn (Netherlands) 1633

Crossing 
 
Two sides:                              An entire story in one frame. 
                                                All juxtapositions.
 
Light of hope                         dark storm clouds.
 
Peace of the blue sky           the majestic power of a squall.
 
The magnificence of a huge sky and lake (despite the title given later) in turmoil.
 
Tissot caught the scene on the boat, John Martin exposed the storm, 
but Rembrandt  displayed  both. An intimate scenario captured within an enormous tempest.
 
Rays of sunlight                     from one side of the painting, lead my eyes to the face of Jesus, 
sitting on a cushion               in the darkness on the other,
 
woken from slumber by panicked followers, most clinging on to parts of
the boat for their lives; Peter, with his knife, a few men bent near Jesus pleading and questioning. 
 
One poor lad vomiting. I feel for him, having personally been in the last ferry allowed across 
the English Channel in a storm where the boat in front had to be rescued. Those waves were big, 
and one's stomach is churned harder than the waves of the sea. I can certainly relate.
 
And Rembrandt himself, Hitchcock-like in his own scene, holds on to his hat with one hand 
and a rope with the other, looking through the '4th wall', straight at us viewing the scene 
as if we have a telescope trained on the boat and he has noticed us watching him.
 
We know the ending to the story, 
Jesus rebuking the storm   calm descending.
Rembrandt hints at this with his patch of blue sky appearing, but he has given us
humanity, in all its chaos and panic, responding badly to a situation, despite 
the solution is in front of them in the boat., sleeping on a cushion.
 
The painting, stolen, cannot be seen by us personally. The search continues,
as we search for the One invisible but always present with us in our little boats in the storms.

Rena Ong

​Rena Ong is an English poet based in Singapore whose work appears in such publications as Ekstasis, A Given Grace, Montfort Review and anthologized in several Mingled Voices Hong Kong, along with  Studio Press Sydney and Fish Publishing in Ireland. Her poems have been displayed in gallery settings in Canada and Japan, and publicly read in Hong Kong and Singapore. an upcoming poem in Haiku shack . USA in 2025. Her poetry review writing also appears internationally.