OGWEN BANK, BETHESDA

At Ogwen Bank there is a rusted sign

‘Warning – Blasting in Progress

telling of old survivals and

unexpected deaths

An ash tree splays its arms into the void, boughs

keening, leaning into light, tenacious roots

toughed out in entrailed tombs, where

old bones groan to eyeless stars, under

anaesthetised skies. I follow the river’s

boiling tune, the beat of dead men’s boots

on woodland paths to creeping clocks in

dusty rooms, in splitting sheds that hum and hymn,

down pathways curved as broken spines where

mothwings skim dead nettled gloom

A quarry hospital laid out in ruins.

crows squat and huddle in the rain , black lines

of baggage on bouldered limbs, weary watchers of

weather and worms, the bwncath wheels, the

water churns.

In every stone there lives an eye, on every tree

there weeps a face, in every pain that creaks the gate,

old winds sing through lungs of

pearl strung ivy

suffocating the slate.