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.