Wernlleath Spring
i
In morning sunshine
fields of green,
dotted with sky-blue
flax and scarlet
pimpernel, steam.
ii
In the heat
of late spring
the wet grass
is thigh high
and smells
earthy.
iii
The air is sweet
with mown hay
and red diesel.
A breeze carries
the clanking of
trailers as they race
up the rough track,
spitting stones
from tractor treads.
iv
There’s a jam
at the steep hairpin
on the incline up
out of Llanon.
At acute angles, cars
back up and back
down and squeeze
past the tractor convoy
and silage falls
in smuts on to
windscreens.
From a Desk (extract)
27/02/21
It’s twelve-forty-two and the lemon light softly
glints through the cut branches of the willow
It is twelve-forty-four and the pruned fuchsia shows no
glimpse of green or recovery from the wet winter
It’s twelve-forty-six and through the rugs on the line
glint shards of pond reflections over shaded willow
It’s twelve-fifty-three, and the milky sky shows white trails
and glimpses and glints of planes heading to America.
_____________
Ann Matthews engages with everyday relationships with her local environment. She has released three collections of poetry on KFS: Strangeways. Repeated Walks (2014), Losing Boundaries (2017) and Home Turf (2020). She currently lives in rural Ceredigion in Mid Wales, where she teaches Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.
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