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...

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"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...

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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

       ...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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

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DAMP 1

Out walking to where three valleys meet,                                                                                                                                                                                                           past Dovestones, on a drizzly day.                                                                                           ...

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