Berwyns, late spring

That year, that high,
the dog fox's coat
hung thick and russet brown,
a match only
for the dead heather
skylarks stuttered
anxious over,
chiding the breeze
that scattered
a shepherd's careworn gait
across snowfields
lingered long
to hide what winter
had harvested months too soon,
leaving only
pale tussock grass
pressed flat,
a carcass picked back
to fleece, skin, bone
and a skull
white as quartz,
the ramblers picked
for cairns to guide them
back the long road home.

The Plaza Cinema, Port Talbot, boyhood haunt of Anthony Hopkins - and soon to be renovated.

picking sticks
six months of wind
stripped from the ashes
my peasant roots
return to the surface

Imouzzer, Morocco

A week to gather the trail dust,

that glazed the bath tagine lid red,
once the hard drawn water,
had circled away,
draining to join the cascades,

as ribbons of snow,
sketched from the slick-rock,
we pedalled over and over,
to meet a sea breeze,
mixing fine spray with the low drone
of bees flower-gorged,
on almond, tarragon, lavender,
clung to the stones,
water carved deep,
in an April dusk,
fading to gold,
like wild honey.

After reading Kathleen Jamie's excellent collection The Overhaul, I have realised that after 25 years, it's time for me to take a break from trying to write poetry. Thanks to you all for visiting this site and your kind comments. I'll leave the site links up for those of you who are interested. Best wishes, Matt

morning stiffness
two towels on a line
left out overnight

Moelfre,  Sir Gar

Among mountains, not much more
than the molehills scraped flat
by the March wind that carves the fat
from a farmer’s face.

Before the tractor, just a moor
with peat hags soaking up stiff rain
fetched from Finisterre
in the time before places had names.

Pre-regulations, the shortest route,
on high from here to there,
where drovers pushed the hill lambs
thigh deep into hell.

Beyond the law, a place to hide
for Beca between the hillside hovels
where soldiers sought the woman
trashing turnpikes.

In the breeze, the turbines turn
over newsprint bile resisting
any change to the pin-prick
footprint of our earth-bound time.

And all this flux, becomes the flock
that twists back black into itself
roosting over a patch of pines
sung to brittle life by the murmuration.

miles from a road
a lone rambler tells us
he's allergic to maps

Valentine's Day
the first primrose
gift enough

half term
crows pick the playground
almost clean