Tal-y-Bont to the Dyfi Estuary

Ty'r Allt* sits
in bright noon sunshine,
earthen tiled floors seeping
into berry-red ash.

A log shifts in the gate.

Fox, at a clearing in the trees, 
sees virgin snow with slash
of crimson-red blood
and angry fur.

         Run
now
                  go
                               directionless,
adrenaline-panicked
        heartbeat urges limbs
                toward dunes and the red-rusty sea
                                with salt to sting the wound,

nimble across myth-drenched waun**
       between riverbed and mountain, 
                seat of giants. Here 
                         brown peat sucks the life

                        out of foal, fowl and fiend
               who succumb to the silt closing over them
       under cover of a soaking sea mist
that bewitches the senses.

        Gone.

Far off, from another shore,
comes an estuary cry,
bird or faery, bog spirit or human child
mewling as the tawny-red cat.

Don't go, don't go.'

'Dychwelyd, dewch yn ôl.'

©Janet Henderson  4th September 2019

*Ty'r Allt - 'the house on the wooded hillside'
** waun - a boggy stretch of land