Conyer

Autumn 2008

To My Grandchild

Conyer

The skyline is battleship grey,
enveloping a low table-topped hill
like some marooned island

In the foreground,
the tufted, feathered heads of the reeds
sway on long, skinny bamboo stems;

and in the fawn coloured reed beds
an avery of brown finches
chatter and chafe,
prattle and purr;
a skylark twittering,
oscillating overhead.

Bramble bushes
crouch on the sides of the drainage ditches
like giant tortoises;
and the frothy, cream cauliflower heads of hawthorn
line either side of the path through the dark woods.

Far,
far off,
traffic and machinery buzz
and busy themselves.

Copyright © 2008 Paul Jenkins

Autumn 2008

These grey, sullen days,
when teardrops hang
from every leaf,
and the wind laments
a summer lost
amongst the trees.

Grey, sullen days,
foreshadowing the ravages of winter,
when
later in the year,
naked branch
and quaking bird,
fly
in the face
of a tyrant wind,
stripping the hillside,
scouring the earth.

Oh, these grey prescient days.

Copyright © 2009 Paul Jenkins

To My Grandchild

Dark, black the night
that falls upon these mountain peaks,
black cloud on granite and slate
extinguishing the lights of homesteads
winking in the valley far below,
Welsh might
laid to sleep.

Steal away home
astride the copper green road
that runs down the spine of hills
above the flooded vale of Efyrnwy
its waters, sullen and anaesthetized.
Ask, what secrets linger beneath its surface?

What manufactured malevolence
rained down its steep forested sides
a quarter of a century ago?
What future prince, yet to return,
Shall rid it of caesium and guilt,
and restore the safe stewardship
of these Welsh mountains and hills?

* Bwlch Groes above Llyn Efyrnwy

Copyright © 2012 Paul Jenkins