hills (Remove filter)
Uchtryd's Summer Place
In Mariamné's time
What trees would have grown so tall
What was there beyond the garden wall?
When she walked beyond the garden gate
Did she see the river's sudden spate
And did the rustle of a summer breeze
Mask the red kite's call above those trees
And did she hear the Spring birds' calls
Above the echo of Ystwyth's falls
Did she stroll her father's ways
And let the...
Tuesday 4th June 2019 2:39 pm
One Last Frozen Tear
"Heavy Snow in Wales": 30th January 2019
A sheet of pure white covers her face: that land I thought I knew
frozen beneath its covering, buried ever deeper in its icy tomb
the contours I know so well:
every dip and valley; hill and gully
smoothed by this mantling shroud that descended
as time slipped slowly away, locking us in its white eternity
One last frozen tear d...
Thursday 31st January 2019 3:00 pm
Above the Valley
As we pass through this Autumn realm,
See the valley bound wraiths of mist
Withdrawing like a tide from the willow
Islands of the marshland
With their starkly black boughed trees
Damply dripping with the mist's remains,
Chill air swirls in the rising breeze, and
Black starlings line the wires beyond a barn
But the red kite in his higher flight
Is lost to sight
...
Wednesday 1st November 2017 2:35 pm
I, Ffynnon Drewi of Mynydd Bach
From the mountain
I pour forth
I give you my waters
to drink
and the many words
of my waters
to hear.
My waters have seen
the gathering
on the hill
above the lake
My waters have heard
the prayers
on the grass bank
My waters have known
the worship
in t...
Friday 29th September 2017 12:24 pm
Wilderness 2001, 2021
You see
a land wraithed in smoke and the stink of death
You feel
man's determination dulled by desperation and
the hollow, guilty hope that the creeping fate might end
at a neighbour's door.
You cannot farm in the present
At least not in Wales.
The hills were silent memorials to herds brought low,
Uncropped: a tragedy of gr...
Friday 28th July 2017 3:00 pm
Chalklands
Chalk undulates across Southern England
Hills, gentle yet steep
Can be overtopped by clay peppered with flints
So treasured by the old folk
As old as the hills is true here
The chalk is a two hundred million year ocean
Stiffened and folded over time
By our living planet
Several human species
Have hunted in these valleys
Have dug into and sculpted these hills
Have left their ghosts ...
Saturday 27th May 2017 7:44 pm
Nant Lluest-Fach
Walking, I discover
Hills I never knew in thirty years of passing;
Valleys, deserted, hidden in folds and time:
Mair says once there was a community here
Self contained, sufficient unto itself
Walking, I find
Landscapes we could have seen before, perhaps shared
Their riches, dreamed their past, known their present:
I'm told these Druid hills sing history itself
Sing...
Wednesday 12th April 2017 2:00 pm
Pile of Stones Shackleton Moor
The final passage of man’s impact
Stones won and worked from a gritty rock face
Once made a shelter, a base, a home
Long abandoned and without form
A vegetated hump on the moor edge reveals
Tilted on its clean worked facet
A stone sink in ashlar remains whole
Testimony to lore
Cleanliness’ was next to godliness
In the high lonely Pennines
Thursday 28th March 2013 4:51 pm
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