Tag Archives

Snowdonia

CILAN UCHAF

From a grassy cliff top, shorn by sheep and wind,

at the Llyn Peninsula’s southern most tip,

we can see across North Cardigan Bay

to Harlech and the heights of Snowdonia,

stretching east to Bala, south beyond Barmouth,

north far beyond Porthmadog. Below

are gulls silent in the thermals – beneath them,

a sickle-shaped cove of sand and shingle.

The ancient place name translates, ‘Highest Chamber’.

 

Through a gate, beside a fishermen’s path,

in some farmer’s field is an unsignposted,

small neolithic burial chamber,

looted aeons ago, of course, but its vast

capstone and the smaller uprights, though slipped

a little, too long ago to be remembered,

are effectively in place. Whether the stones

were already nearby – ice age detritus –

or had to be hauled from afar, someone

thought life mattered enough to acknowledge death

with a major piece of engineering.

 

NORTH CARDIGAN BAY

This evening’s gibbous moon is a blood orange,

rising over Snowdonia’s ranges

and Criccieth Castle’s promontory,

shining its rippled beams across the waves

unerringly towards us. Much later

it transforms into a gleaming silver, moving

south and high over Harlech Castle,

that towers above the far, dark shore.

 

From first light the sand and shingle beach,

beneath our windows, is lined with the black,

triangular paraphernalia

of solitary sea anglers. Diligent

environmentalists they return

each bream, and bass, and dab into the sticky,

salty vestiges of the Gulf Stream,

and stow away their gear like good children.

 

As the storm-gauge falls, the day turns humid, still,

and haze, out in the bay, mid-afternoon,

thickens into a smoke-grey cloud that seems

to hover just above the surface

of the glassy sea. Horizontal lightning

sparks and flashes, flashes and sparks, and thunder

rumbles briefly. The storm dwindles, becoming

a rain shower, and the bay begins to clear.

In the dusk we can almost see the castles.

Tonight the moon is gold.

 

 

 

 

AUBADE

I raise the blind of the small dormer window.

A night of rain has filled the cast iron gutter.

A jackdaw is perched on the rim sipping.

Suddenly the bird lifts off to join

a clattering of jackdaws mobbing

a buzzard. We are two hundred feet

above the littoral – once under sea

but now mostly pastoral land,

the fields a dull gold in the autumn dawn.

The shore is a mile away – but opening

the window brings the waves’ roar like unending

traffic. The buzzard banks, drops – jackdaws disperse.

Far beyond are Snowdonia’s peaks

and passes: mauves, purples; shadows and mists;

endless dry stone walls; glacial memories.

A perfect rainbow forms between us

and the distant mountains – in the gutter

rainwater still as glass.

 

 

 

HYMN

At the top of Henlys Lane where it bends
to Llanfaes is an oak tree and a bench
with a view across pastoral fields
to the castle and, beyond the water,
Snowdonia. On this autumn’s first day –
here as warm and sunny as summer
but with a softer, fading light – we sit and talk
of our frequent, fifty year pilgrimage
to this coast and its sublime vistas.

Suddenly, we see what appears to be
smoke drifting up Moel Wnion’s mauve walls.
Binoculars and a setting sun reveal
a mountainous vein, a gash of quartz.
‘Dafydd y Garreg Wen, David of the White
Rock,’ I say – and you hum the harper’s
haunting air and then, encouraged, sing softly:
‘David, the bard, on his bed of death lies.
Pale are his features and dim are his eyes.’

And you talk, as you have before, of learning
the song from your grandma, a free spirit.
And I think how fortunate I am
being sung to gently as the acorns
patter about us, scattering like
the seeds they are, and the white rock becomes
a deep, purple shadow.

 

 

 

CROSBY

Another Place ©SCES 2008

We crunch through razor shells and squelch through

blackish silt – there is coal in the drenched sand –

to reach the artist’s cast iron avatars.

They are steadfast against anglers, vandals,

local Tories, jet skiers, the Coastguard,

and the RSPB – but not the wind

or the sea. Some are rusting deeply,

some barnacled already, some sinking

or rising – others missing on this

shifty shore. They have watched the North Sea.

Now, from here, they can see Snowdonia,

The Skerries, Queenstown, the New World –

and, some, when the tide is in, sea creatures

in their wilderness of oblivion.

Above, ships pass and the wind farm turns.

HERONS IN THEIR HABITATS, LOVERS IN THEIR LIVES

'The Heron Hunt', Eugene Fromentin 1820-1876

i

A heron – self-motivated, self-contained, aloof – stands,

between a potted phormium and a wooden Buddha,

on the roof of a houseboat on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam,

two metres or so from passing cyclists on the embankment

and the nervous tourists queuing for Anne Frank’s house.

ii

A heron – undisturbed, unconnected, elsewhere – perches securely

on a fallen oak beside a Cheshire pond near the motorway,

and the cargoes and the cars bound for the docks

slow almost imperceptibly as they pass.

iii

A heron wades at the water’s edge by Beaumaris pier: an accomplished,

stilt-walker’s strides – elegant, certain, considered, entertaining.

The setting sun casts our close shadows on the planking.

In the distance, cloud shadows cross Snowdonia.

And we say, as we always say, ‘This is so beautiful’:

its disparateness; the stillness of the air; the calm of the straits;

the prism of colours; the indifference of the heron…

which, suddenly and hugely, takes to the air, calling, calling…