of bracken and heather

of bracken and heather

and was the copper valley of industry,

ever seen here besides this gower sea?

or, in tears, could the wild sea ever have been

tussled on this heather-smoked hillside with me?

the answer is of course my ghost,

seen in the very scenes you see.

Shell poems

R S Thomas

R S Thomas 

his writing is the water ruler

where the flood breached one day past

when the tide of his heart was in full spate

see how high the river was that day

oh that i could write that way

see the autumn leaves of my words

dash like a rat across the flow

to swim up stream is so hard now

as i cling to the ruler black and white

where i might if ‘things’ are right

catch that imp and lay him low

and then you would really know

how high my tide of words might flow

ah time time

ah time time

when out of focus stares down through the old songs

the old faces that disappear each time you turn

and glance in their direction

the aroma of each embrace spins finger-tipped

away in the slow whirlpool of the young days

surfing back down the time of places and

laughter and strides into a certain future

where the dice of love must someday throw a double six

days when acceleration was accelerating and

scene changes were coming faster than one could

caress with a loving word or two

we see them as they were from where we are

and how we wish we could go back there again

landfall

landfall

in that last dance of fall when

the autumn leaf meets its shadow end

and the high sea driftwood finds the land and

the reed mace marries the water-meadow hen 

and how they now go hand in hand

when the snows of winter follow when

the white sward will tarry deep and long

ere spring buds burst to start the cycle once again  

rhossili twilight

rhossili twilight 

walking across yon wane skein sky,

the worm goes drowning down with day;

listen - listen! to the cloud/sea sigh,

out across the sound of rhossili bay

global warning

global warning 

one day and soon the frogspawn will not arrive

in the spring of a child’s jam jar

there will be two rats in the gutter

where there used to be one

we will bump into each other running

in different directions

or we will somnambulate dazed

feeling for the Braille watermark

on the tides of our stupidity 

the slag of the old furnaces will melt again

and call down the mettle of our excuses

and find them a brittle bridge to an uncertain future

where we once grew up and went out into the world

and returned weary in age to our fireside chair 

now we hide under our bought blankets

even as the moths around the light 

  that we aver does not burn 

eat away at that pastiche blanket

to reveal a burning juggernaut bearing down

and our shadow 

pinioned against the black wall of space

sees in a flash our world burnt away

and every tombstones of remembrance

is but a puff of smoke