Nant Cwm

There was a game I used to play

when I visited my grandmother’s farm

on the low Welsh hills in the drizzle. 

She said that it wasn’t raining

‘we are just inside a cloud cariad’ 

I would trace the source of the stream,

Nant Cwm, at the bottom of her garden.

Go out in my black rubber boots

wade against the current

over multicoloured stones,

patches of sinking sand,

through brambled woods, 

bright green boggy fields.

When the stream forked

I tried a way I hadn’t gone before,

to and discover where all this water

came from. Eventually, when all the branches

were traced to a trickle on the hillside

or a spring in the cold rocks

I took to trying to dam the stream

with rocks and twigs and fallen branches.

Now I play this game again

alone in my head

to find the source of the water

that flows through me

and clogs my eyes

as that low Welsh rain used to

blur my vision.

Just like Nant Cwm

there are too many places to know

and my dams of talk and pills 

never really staunch the flow.

‘We are just inside a cloud cariad.’