View from Pen-yr-heolgerrig, Merthyr
This time of year, stark contrasts of foggy then clear nights.
An owl gwdihw-ing out back so near it could be on the oak which dominates our small garden. I gaze through the window and catch sight of its spectral presence drifting across the wild land.
A time when the Valleys come into their own....once I saw a visiting couple on the Cardiff-Merthyr train who excitedly followed the River Taf on its journey, one side then the other and below us in a small gorge near Quaker's Yard. We see things anew through other's eyes.
Of course, those colours!
Ones without names between the browns, yellows and ambers.....but we don't need terms.
The valley wears its autumn robes and they're no shroud but proud cloaks and sweeping dresses.
'Look at me before I fall!' it calls out, a singing voice from the up-down topography.
A time when lamp-posts suddenly grow red poppies and our white ones of peace and innocent victims are sometimes seen as feathers of surrender.
Yet, remember those who died in Bloody Sunday marching for the rights of a minority forced to live in a sectarian statelet they wanted no part of.
Remember also the 5th of November and how my family will not celebrate.
( In Belfast the tricolour of Ireland and effigies of republicans burnt on top of loyalist bonfires : triumphalism flaming amok.
TV's 'Gunpowder' has brought it home : how this country celebrates the victory of persecutors.)
This time of year when darkness comes and some find it difficult just to appear ; when cold and damp ache the limbs and often it's too much of a struggle to get to town.
I eat apples, day by day, from an orchard far away.
You cannot buy such a taste ; it has been frozen out. A crispness, juiciness, a crunch that takes me back to windfalls of childhood picked from strangers' gardens ; always on the run. A taste which spells 'Pen Dinas'.........Tir na Nog , land of orchards on the horizon.
Our tree has given fruit we can't savour. Leave that to wood pigeons, ring doves, jackdaws and bright summery jays who disappear over the Waun at a flicker of sound.
THE JAY BECOMES
The jay flits and hops
and flutter-flaps
from oak branch to branch
swallowing ripe acorns.
Sticks hit the wooden fence,
single, sharp beats
which send it scuttering
quick across the Waun.
The tree soon grows
within the colourful bird,
out of its stomach
a sapling spreads brown wings.
Leaves will replace its feathers,
it will become a nest
for its young and the eggs
rest warm and smooth as acorns.
An owl gwdihw-ing out back so near it could be on the oak which dominates our small garden. I gaze through the window and catch sight of its spectral presence drifting across the wild land.
A time when the Valleys come into their own....once I saw a visiting couple on the Cardiff-Merthyr train who excitedly followed the River Taf on its journey, one side then the other and below us in a small gorge near Quaker's Yard. We see things anew through other's eyes.
Of course, those colours!
Ones without names between the browns, yellows and ambers.....but we don't need terms.
The valley wears its autumn robes and they're no shroud but proud cloaks and sweeping dresses.
'Look at me before I fall!' it calls out, a singing voice from the up-down topography.
A time when lamp-posts suddenly grow red poppies and our white ones of peace and innocent victims are sometimes seen as feathers of surrender.
Yet, remember those who died in Bloody Sunday marching for the rights of a minority forced to live in a sectarian statelet they wanted no part of.
Remember also the 5th of November and how my family will not celebrate.
( In Belfast the tricolour of Ireland and effigies of republicans burnt on top of loyalist bonfires : triumphalism flaming amok.
TV's 'Gunpowder' has brought it home : how this country celebrates the victory of persecutors.)
This time of year when darkness comes and some find it difficult just to appear ; when cold and damp ache the limbs and often it's too much of a struggle to get to town.
I eat apples, day by day, from an orchard far away.
You cannot buy such a taste ; it has been frozen out. A crispness, juiciness, a crunch that takes me back to windfalls of childhood picked from strangers' gardens ; always on the run. A taste which spells 'Pen Dinas'.........Tir na Nog , land of orchards on the horizon.
Our tree has given fruit we can't savour. Leave that to wood pigeons, ring doves, jackdaws and bright summery jays who disappear over the Waun at a flicker of sound.
THE JAY BECOMES
The jay flits and hops
and flutter-flaps
from oak branch to branch
swallowing ripe acorns.
Sticks hit the wooden fence,
single, sharp beats
which send it scuttering
quick across the Waun.
The tree soon grows
within the colourful bird,
out of its stomach
a sapling spreads brown wings.
Leaves will replace its feathers,
it will become a nest
for its young and the eggs
rest warm and smooth as acorns.
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