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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Who will ever tell or know

the unheard silent echoes

from passing lives laid low:

those ghosts of chanted psalms

once melodious in their praise

lie buried beneath the turf

within walls they helped to raise;

and who can see the cowled monks

whose ghostly whispered prayers

whose canticle or hymn

whispers through the evening's airs -

through the great stone entrance a...

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An almost mystic silence

descends on the lambent, lamb bent,

lamb bobbing fields

as the West sinking sun

leaves an early evening light,

the day has almost passed:

the bright pale green of the new larch buds

the rusty pink brown of the budding almond

the gold of a burgeoning dog wood

are set against

the solid darkness of a solitary fir tree

the soft clouds in a...

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I, dreamlost,

wake

to golden leaves of beech

sunlit

from my bed

as airdew clouds over the hedge

rise and vanish

as the eastern horizon above the valley

is lost, sunk

beneath dawndrifts of mist

not yet warmed to fade

beneath the clear blue sky;

the uncut grass of the dew-wet lawn,

droplet bent:

cool promise as

I, barefooted,

explore

the cusp of the...

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5th September 2018

Today

on the drive home

the transcendent wonder

of the clear ice blue rimmed with golden pink

and the blackness of trees

horizon silhouettes

and bats

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a sonnet

That thou may'st happly spend your day

Fair maid amongst the northern hills

With books and study that will oft defray

Your time and thought in winter's chills;

That there is pleasure 'mongst your shelves

Oh lady in your cottage home

Tis proven by each and everyone who delves

In dusty library vaults to hunt a tome;

That thy bookish studies are good I swear

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16th July 2018

In places the grass is brown and dry

The garden is a desert of cracked peat

Plants dead and trees about to die

Only my sunflower loves the heat

But this is Wales, yet

nearly all of my bees

have never known these

 raindrops

until

today

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I sit outside the door

on a slate bench

my back against the cottage wall

in the evening sun

listening to a blackbird sing

the most astonishing sweet notes

In front of me

there is elderflower

honeysuckle

buttercups spangle the uncut grass

and the old larch looms in its corner

beyond the ancient stones of Hafod

which mark my plot

The sun has not long returned

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In my mind

buried deep

                a golden grain

                of  Welsh

                beach

In my mind

our impressions

                in the hot sand

                where we

                lay

It is there

buried deep

                that single second

                that moment

                in which our

                minds

        ...

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In my mind

buried deep

                a golden grain

                of  Welsh

                beach

In my mind

shallow dips

                in the hot sand

                where we

                lay

It is there

buried deep

                that single second

                that moment

                in which our

                minds

           ...

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For Gwen, Anne and Eryl

In that happy heady grass-green Spring of my years

A time of lambent lamb slow lamb full days around a whited cottage

Lent us space and ease beneath the sun long sky

Golden glorious hours together in a single thought

With close chicken scrape and distant herd

When the swallows dipped to the fly buzz

When the kite climbed to a gliding speck

     ...

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I grew up in Wales

Around the Swansea docks

I walked beneath huge cargo ships

Held up with props and blocks

I was made in Wales

Around the southern ports

I watched the big ships dock

My family guessed my thoughts

I was mined in Wales

Near valleys black with slag

And closing pits and picket lines

With many a mine lodge flag

I was forged in Wales

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In the inky winter darkness

A rough track from the lane

Leads upward onto the mountain:

                A small glimmer hints at life

                and we wonder where we are being led.

Out of the blackness, a dark shape shows in the slight mist

                The lights in a window flicker dimly yellow

                and the smell of peat smoke drifts down in the still ai...

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The sand was always hot

                beside the white dunes and the coarse grass

The sea was always blue

                between the black rocks and the horizon haze

The beach was always ours

                between the seagull shout and the distant crowd

We were always alone

               between the far world and our near union

We swa...

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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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Alf Smith was his name, though, we should remember him

As more than the labourer on a small Welsh farm

Who milked the cows and tended every farmer whim;

Twice daily fitting clusters onto teats and pouring milk to churns,

Taken for collection to stand beside the lane between the ferns.

Twice daily, too, he cleaned the shed with hose and broom

And waited to hear what chores would f...

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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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i

Innocent

     he met a force

Untried

            it held him

... and wonder drained the world of substance

            re-arranged the pages of his book to give more radiant a reading.

The light of new possibilities

pressed down on time.

The girl sang to him "You can hear the boats go by". He

l...

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Much more than half my life ago

Some chance led us to this place;

Now, my heart is caught and held

By the peace of its earth and space.

Some while past, when first she left me

I could not make my soul adjust

But cached it safe within the plot

Beside her memory and her mortal dust.

And as the family aged and spread

My lonely tenancy grew content

Past spectres...

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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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We came upon

A mystic way leading nowhere but the hills.

Floored in leaves, tree roofed, bank-bound

Untrodden but by wanderers for centuries past.

What lay beyond, worthy of such industry?

Perhaps a long forgotten hearth tenured by shepherd or crone.

Or did this tended track pass on to a hilltop way:

Miles now lost to grass and sheep,

A one-time druidic path to some time-er...

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Cariad

A word of the heart

Born deep in the being,

            resonant with the land's love  

Cariad

A word for the soul

Harmonic with soft timbre,

            warmed on heart's ember

Cariad

A word from the deep

Breathed only in love -

            impossible to deny

Cariad

A word never of the brain

Soft spoke; heart's heat

            ea...

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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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