Scaffolding around an old church

in scant countryside 

a skeleton encasing lungs and a heart

that pulsate more weakly now

at the wrong end of a millennium 

of belief and taxation 

birdsong and evensong

are rarities nowadays 

so a disembodied choir

of barbed wire

and its round hollow metal posts

murmurs low

to a congregation of livestock
 

a crew of crows guffaws

for they know all about

worms that abound

the marvellous underground 

its secrets to keep

kiss me quick 

kiss me dead

I have not yet found God

nor has He found me

on another winter’s solstice

but it’s a new day

one that has never been before 

so it’s going to be alright

the mounting illumination of its early morning

a sky going through the shades of blue

then pinks and reds

there’s a ghost on my lawn

a ghost of dawn

maybe it’s only there 

before anyone looks that way

before the stillness is scared off

by the yapping of excitable dogs

as I wait to be enveloped

by a fog of unconsciousness 

waiting for no reason

that’s worth knowing 

waiting for me 

to wake up

to make up 

to shake up

and when I have done so

meet me at Durrington Walls

where we’ll raise a glass of fortitude 

distilled from the bitter fruit of native trees

in the new Neolithic new towns

retreat into the light we have created 

until the sun promises to linger once more

I guess that’s winter for you 

look to the future now 

it’s only just begun 

(Slade 1973)

I used my lunch hour to eat lunch

I went on breaks in order not to break

on Bank Holidays I holidayed

in abandoned banks

and slept safe in their safes

I am neither anti vax nor anti mask

but I have my suspicions 

I was not a girl

neither am I non binary

I object to having to pay

to withdraw my money at an ATM

and getting a do not reply email

there was a wondrous sunset yesterday 

people felt compelled to share 

images of it on social media 

I saw it too albeit from the corner of an eye

and am sorry that I passed up that chance

I abhor racists but am uncomfortable 

about residing in a fragile country

where nearly everyone appears

to be a stranger and new names

join the lexicon of living here

in this xenophobic kingdom 

it’s getting hard to remember 

so why bother trying?

how much of memory is incorrect 

to such an extent that is

a fanciful falsehood?

in a nation of controversial statues

it might be an idea to render them

eventually anonymous 

it wouldn’t work for the first few months 

but our bruised attention span

and the conveyor belt of distraction 

would soon make us warm to these 

handsome and interesting strangers 

poised on their magnificent plinths

as though they are contemplating 

jumping into our world

As the light dwindles again

and I am returned to that winter

my baby face a horror show

of scar and NHS stitches

I spy a large spider on a Lino floor

my mother christens the arachnid 

pida pw

syllables I can almost parrot 

the invented dialogue of infancy

delightful dictionary-free words 

that bubble and exist only 

in a certain time place and feeling 

the music of the mother tongue 

my boy imagination 

in Yuri Gagarin’s shed

cosmonaut caught 

in dawning thought confusion 

my reverie when sleep

was blessed and not timetabled

foetus as astronaut 

tethered in the helmeted womb

every amazing event

each star show has its mundane side

something so down to earth

we can’t escape 

no matter how high we climb

(Curriculum vitae)

he cuts the lawns of an empty property 

the cable of the mower in his hands

is the microphone lead of a famous crooner

on a 1970s television light entertainment show

cracking the whip on kitten backing singers

what will the neighbours think

in their own private theatres?

in the evening when it is more seemly

he pours two glasses of rosé wine

equally mainly by sound 

and during subsequent replenishment 

he thinks he can hear the chorus

of the hymn mae’r Iesu yn geidwad i mi 

(Jesus is my saviour)

in the meeting of drink and glass

the music that follows work’s end

in vino veritas or so it is said

This is not a Welsh Not

but a Welsh is and always will be

raving over higgledy piggledy slates

with fingernails of demons scraping

screeching out a lost non rock and roll

and not a low flying bomber

in sight or sound

tipsy on communion wine 

and a quick fumble

in the ecumenical jungle

dog tired dog collars loosen

to a beat of life lived

and not analysed

not a sermon planned

nor an afterlife awaited

submerge into sublime harps

inherited from the elders

never understand 

but defined as Corvid

not COVID

avoid their Larsen traps

and their booby traps

with our Weapons of Non Destruction 

Peter Hurkos a Dutch psychic

and y Mab Darogan

(the Son of Destiny)

and how about a little of Twm o’r Nant

or David R Edwards ?

we have become strange bedfellows 

but at least it is touching
 

I am not the National Poet

and I know it

I know my place

but not where to find it

we are all the National Poet

but don’t know it

we don’t know our place

nor where to find it

this is not a Welsh Not

a Welsh Not not

not Welsh not

I am not a Welsh Not

Nothing to see

not much here just a disarray of stone 

and multi coloured corrugated iron

splashes of spilt paint among

the day to day ordinary rust

it is our land where we always were

out of the way but easily found

when loot and recruits were demanded

(Geraint Jarman sang of Ethiopia Newydd 

but where is that now?)

it's a Sunday afternoon 

a half century ago

at the home of a relative

who was already old then

they treat me well

dose me up on sugar lumps

and familial kindness

it's sunny and dream-like

and fruit fattens on slender branches

but they failed to warn me 

about the rising wind and sea levels

about the idea of a future

and how sweetness flatters then corrodes 

and that thorns never really leave your skin

He'd never heard of replacement theory

but he was still sitting there

cowled in a no good hoodie

a cheap light grey like his complexion 

he who used to receive final demands

by lowering a bucket from an upstairs window

unhinged by losing the family farm

to irresistible forces

to inevitability 

those were the days
 

narrow old men trying to get the most

out of their narrow old tractors 

slim and puny workhorses 

when compared to the monsters

that superseded them

but still running on an idea

of efficiency through regular oiling

the treadmill of inheritance

the hoped-for success of repetition 

their pinched sunned faces

squint at the diminishing returns

their loosening holdings

with sloping ploughed fields

whose pious furrows end in

mists that could conceal sea 

sky a rainbow’s terminus

or Gawain’s green chapel

he won't budge until the undertaker

is booked and his pockets gone through

loss adjusted to nought

a vacated shell colonised 

by curious new creatures 

a beast among other beasts

brittle flinty had