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Paul Steffan
Jones
Alex Barr
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Mary Gray
Hills
Geoff Yeomans
Cwmbach: the garden
They travelled on a slow, ice-marbled road
through winter-threaded trees,
the sky load-heavy with the threat of snow.
The waiting cottage welcomed them, its keys
loose-hanging in the door.
Through long, bleak winter days,
they scoured the cottage walls and floor
and made it like the inside of a shell, clam-tight.
But then a blaze of sunlight broke
the seal, and noises woke them:
a brook in spate, and gentle winds that shook
the trees to spill the sound of spring.
And then they worked to bring
some order to the wilderness.
They dragged out matted blankets of decay
and thorny woodiness. They tore
at brambles, dug out roots with spades
to break away the barricades
of willow, thorn and sycamore.
At last, they’d made an emptiness to fill
with vivid leaves, high-stalked, exotic flowers,
to make the darkest shadows shine.
They planted slender trees to line
the distances and spill
their blossom where they walked.
Today, I tried too late to find their paradise:
now swathes of bracken block
the raddled paths and, bully-like, the bramble throws
its weight across the trellised arch. Thick nettles mock
pale refugees of once flamboyant flowers.
Weariness and age have let the wilderness display
its riotous contempt for their brief enterprise.
Mike Sharpe
