Stories from Home

This time I have now I fill

with careful listening –

my heart’s knock against the table,

the paper’s sigh, its soft harmonic rasp

beneath my hand.

There is the rook, a distant farmer’s call.

There is the solitary buzzard’s high beseeching whistle.

There, last autumn’s leaves chafe the summer twigs.

There are the dogs across the valley

in their prison-barn.

There is the recurrent bee, its hesitant buzz distinct now

from the fly’s nasal careering.

There is the aeroplane, its distant growl not coarse like the tractor

three dry fields away.

There are the sheep, moaning, like catarrhal old men.

A pheasant proclaims in guttural contralto

that it lives

in Cilybyddar Woods.

There are no soliloquies from the songbirds here in August -

their intricate springtime questions

have long been answered.

And there’s the house -

steadfast here since Owain was a boy -

creaking and snapping its cladding in the sun,

reeking of hot wood and

willing to share the pleasures of cool,

dark rooms.