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

                and only heard.

 

Between the valley and the heights

We cross the dampened upland ffridd

Still veiled in its grey-bright dampened air.

The heath is springy underfoot

With moss pools often hidden in the turf,

Great grass clumps rise between

As if remembering trees that once had been.

Where the land rises towards the hills

Patches of gorse and bracken surround stone ruins:

A red-berried rowan offers cheery thanks

                for its survival.

 

Now, the swirls of mist that hid the way

Give way to a crisply clear blue heaven above

Two red kites drifting on the still cool breeze.

Did these same watchers in our mountain skies

Watch as the hill fort or the henge was raised

Or see the slaughter of Caradog's men -

Do they still remember as they glide

What once these mosaic hillsides were

Or is their focus only on the ground below the wing?

Do they even see us as they pass over,

                zephyr drifting?