Ear of Sultan, the pit pony - earth sculpture, Parc Penallta
Walking. So vital to verse : rhythm and breath. Seeking the changing seasons, glimpses of animals never seen before. One day the kingfisher.
As a teenager in East Anglia those fields of barley and sugar beet ; isolated copses. Transistor radio in hand, listening to 'Pick of the Pops'.
Or in the flatlands closer to the city , searching for a river-bank to hide from the huge horizon.
In Aber as a student re-visiting my past daily down the prom, on the half-pier's machines, or over to Tanybwlch's storm beach where I once learnt to swim in freezing, wave-crashing Bay.
( Seeing a Cornishman pop up from the long grass, book in hand.....what a place to read, to learn!).
Pen Dinas bound by paths where I wandered wild as a kid playing kiss chase and hide 'n' seek till the sun went down and my brother was sent to haul me home.
Walking. The metre and the line. A forest track or a footpath.
In Garw Nant in the Beacons all the animals seem to have gone and left their understudies : wooden imitations sitting by the route, fossilized before their time.
Yet in the Valleys you suddenly discover a place passed many times, some of it reclaimed from the old mine, where waste is kicked up.
Parc Penallta, Ystrad Mynach : wasteland being slowly taken back and forests of deciduous and evergreen.
Single spark of a green woodpecker as the sounds compete : buzzards above while, from over the valley, the road-rush of incessant traffic.
There'll be dog-owners, Nordic walkers and ardent runners later on, but for now this place is virtually deserted, as we tread tentatively on the grass form of Sultan the pit pony, a profiled shape which makes you join those raptors and gaze down.
Blackberries rot in the bushes, yet gorse flames even as autumn begins its colours of dying.
Returning to Merthyr over Gelligaer Common, where horses, sheep and cattle wander over the cropped , bare moorlands and a quarry looms on the skyline like a strange, out-of-place volcano.
The Valleys are full of places like Parc Penallta and sometimes we forget to laud them, living close to cosseted National Parks.
Walking. Sentences punctuated by birds and squirrels. Burying images for another, hungrier time.
GRASS PONY, PARC PENALLTA
for Julie, Tog and Debbie
Scrabbling up the flanks of Sultan,
you'd need to be a buzzard :
in the distance hear them mewling.
Whispering into his wire ear :
'How dark deep down,
how damp in the narrow gallery?'
Standing on a nostril
clinkered with pit waste,
a memory of thick dust.
Walking along the pony's body,
his hair of returning grass
and mane with slag exposed.
With his hooves of coal
and the wind whinnying,
Sultan's a twmp protruding.
With eye of split stone
peering into a clear sky,
come at last into light.
As a teenager in East Anglia those fields of barley and sugar beet ; isolated copses. Transistor radio in hand, listening to 'Pick of the Pops'.
Or in the flatlands closer to the city , searching for a river-bank to hide from the huge horizon.
In Aber as a student re-visiting my past daily down the prom, on the half-pier's machines, or over to Tanybwlch's storm beach where I once learnt to swim in freezing, wave-crashing Bay.
( Seeing a Cornishman pop up from the long grass, book in hand.....what a place to read, to learn!).
Pen Dinas bound by paths where I wandered wild as a kid playing kiss chase and hide 'n' seek till the sun went down and my brother was sent to haul me home.
Walking. The metre and the line. A forest track or a footpath.
In Garw Nant in the Beacons all the animals seem to have gone and left their understudies : wooden imitations sitting by the route, fossilized before their time.
Yet in the Valleys you suddenly discover a place passed many times, some of it reclaimed from the old mine, where waste is kicked up.
Parc Penallta, Ystrad Mynach : wasteland being slowly taken back and forests of deciduous and evergreen.
Single spark of a green woodpecker as the sounds compete : buzzards above while, from over the valley, the road-rush of incessant traffic.
There'll be dog-owners, Nordic walkers and ardent runners later on, but for now this place is virtually deserted, as we tread tentatively on the grass form of Sultan the pit pony, a profiled shape which makes you join those raptors and gaze down.
Blackberries rot in the bushes, yet gorse flames even as autumn begins its colours of dying.
Returning to Merthyr over Gelligaer Common, where horses, sheep and cattle wander over the cropped , bare moorlands and a quarry looms on the skyline like a strange, out-of-place volcano.
The Valleys are full of places like Parc Penallta and sometimes we forget to laud them, living close to cosseted National Parks.
Walking. Sentences punctuated by birds and squirrels. Burying images for another, hungrier time.
GRASS PONY, PARC PENALLTA
for Julie, Tog and Debbie
Scrabbling up the flanks of Sultan,
you'd need to be a buzzard :
in the distance hear them mewling.
Whispering into his wire ear :
'How dark deep down,
how damp in the narrow gallery?'
Standing on a nostril
clinkered with pit waste,
a memory of thick dust.
Walking along the pony's body,
his hair of returning grass
and mane with slag exposed.
With his hooves of coal
and the wind whinnying,
Sultan's a twmp protruding.
With eye of split stone
peering into a clear sky,
come at last into light.
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