Llangwyn

Llangwyn

The lane was fringed with grasses and 

the frank gaze of speedwell

bold and open as a child’s stare.

Tiny butterflies wavered by your face

and because the grass,

alive with leaping insects, slapped and stung your knees,

you stepped between two dusty wheel-tracks,

where tussocks brushed the car.

           

Those days the sky held too much light,

the colour leached, the distances exposed.

Half the fields were butter-yellow slabs,

their hedges dark and heavy with birds.

Summer, still and warm, left ewes

ragged in half moulted wool; the lambs grown 

fat with their first coat.

The lane came to nothing at the meadow’s southern edge,

peppered with mole-hills and the droppings of sheep. 

Flies, the colour of cowshit, pestered us

and a band of dusty sheep, gasping in tree-shadow,

cracked the quiet valley with their bleating,

wary of the dog. 

We paused in shade and looked –

tiny freckles had floated slowly to the surface

of our skin.

And there you saw them, tiny glowing coals,

shy in the hedgerow’s dim - the strawberries;

destined for this long hot day,

the touch of your small fingers,

the press of your parched tongue.

Back to the house

we spoke of cups of water

and crayons

and Daddy coming home.