Mike Jenkins - Welsh Poet & Author
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CRUEL  COMMANDER SUN

7/20/2013

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Picture
   - Lovely weather we're avin!
   - Aye.....yew copin?
   - Nah, playin ell with my knees....swellin up real bard.
   - I carn sleep at night me. Ow 'bout yew? I get s sticky gotta ave a shower at three in-a mornin!
   - Aye, an me. The missis won' ave the windows open neither....scared o gettin bitten.
   - They do say we got it f'r another two bloody weeks an all.
   - Never? Could do with some rain f'r the garden.
   - Right, see yew then!........Yew off anywhere nice?
   - Aye, Tewnisia......booked it las year......needed some tidee weather.


  A weekend of soaring temperatures and four people die in the Brecon Beacons.
   Two experienced T.A. soldiers on a selection course for the SAS, out on the mountains in almost 90 degrees (I can only think in Fahrenheit). Survivalist experiment was it?
   Whatever happened to the basic question like - 'Are you willing to collude with Loyalists on bomb plots, or shoot unarmed freedom fighters in the  back?'
   Young men duped into joining the British army which has systematically tortured and killed innocents in so many conflicts, from Kenya to Cyprus to the six counties.
   Now sacrificed in the burning heat of Cymru, with the illusion of 'Every soldier's a hero' on so many tongues.
   Time to withdraw from Wales, to leave these hills to their wildness and campers, walkers, climbers, picknickers and those who just gaze at reservoirs.
   Two men lugging heavy back-packs and told to find their way, given a deadline. Minds befuddled by heat-stroke in the shadeless openness of Pen-y-fan.
   A crazy callous challenge.
   The sun can be a killer and so too can water, luring others in.
   Two men - with far less media coverage given  - enticed by the temptations of a cool swim.
   In Pontsticill and Cantref reservoirs, lost forever.
   The flat calm appearing so harmless.
   Yet, hiding the depth and darkness and sudden cold to cramp limbs and drag down, deep as the drowned churches and farms.
   Men who had only wanted to escape the prickly heat of the afternoon sun.
   Those reservoirs drank them down. Drank them long and spat them out, just as the green desert , with dried-up streams, had blistered and parched those soldiers.
   Men of peace and men of war, destroyed by the cruel commander sun.


                                 THE  LAST  LIGHT




I will take my Gorgonzola feet
and Danish Blue slippers
which defeat all deodorizers
and escape through French windows
to lie under our oak.



Attacked by midges (sharp memories
of Scottish lochs at twilight),
I eye the air for bats
zip-zagging low for gnats
in channels between leaves and eaves.


The high tops catch the sun
from far west over the mountains :
my brain    the tree    branches    veins
wood become fluid       sap     blood
bole    body     lifting to the last light.

    

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