Of Wind or Rain

Invisible hands bring rain
Or, without rain, brush distant grass
In curved strokes upwards
From hollow to hilltop.

In wide green waves,
Darker currents bend the seedheads,
And fade away in the field margins.

Absentia

No more naming the flood's last scattering
Nor seawood bleached to the bone by weather;
No name for spiralled veins in living wood,
None for cracked ice under new ice forming.

No more words will separate
Bud from flower or the fruit that follows;
None will call up a harvest or name its days;
None will dry a summer after rain in spring.

Missing Words for the World

Words slip away, disused.
In forgotten hollows in the hills,
Names for land or the shapes of land
Discolour and decay.

There is a silence which
Disconnects the tongue and its understanding;
Without knowledge the eyes in turn, fail.
Rain or mist, falls like ignorance.

Aneirin Byron

Bard of Gwarchodwr

Out of town, on the hill above, Aneirin Byron slams the shutters wide. Ty Bach, his tiny cell, his only rest, one room to sleep, one room to live. Another of the name, behind the byre, the strawbox, secret, one to visit. He breathes the morning like the vanishing mist. Inward air rustles papers on his wooden desk.

Here his late-night offerings to his muse, his waxed and waning words, scribble on the page, yet to be ordered, or pass from mumble to meaning, from meaning to wisdom, or rise into beauty, breathtaken beauty, a sigh on the tongue, a song.

Looking down, as Byron must, his keen imagination like angel wings carries him over the town. His mind’s eye traces street, lane and stairway, over roofs of slate and shingle, the baked pantile, the tinshack sheet, sad-wood rafters poking out beyond repair.

Writer's Digest

I am a poet.
Such is my resolution,
My hope,
Or maybe destiny.
I write to pass the word.
I catch the slogans that fall from billboards.
The wine of language is a sour cup
And, when we drink the medium dry,
What speech remains but advertising,
Little breaks in the winds of change,
Testimony to our monumental creed.

If I am a poet,
I am one of many
Wasting words with every uncharted thought.
In my study,
In my throne room,
I strain away, cathartic,
Reading toiletries for inspiration
In the shackles of perforated paper chains
In an autumn of Izal leaves.