This is a river that kills.
Barely ten foot wide
in three stepped stones
I am over across to Hades.

Sat upon blistered rock
reamed white and lime with lichen,
listening to water roll its glittering leaps
out of the mountain’s green belly

it strikes me the same—an idyll
this side as much as the other, and I
alone here this late summer day
save for a few sheep ambling by

in search of the elusive flower.
It is hard now to imagine
how winter comes and these bare hills
bleed rain from every gully, spill

their bloated spate-brown guts
in two short miles downstream
where tangled sheep, a hapless man
trail like any other riverweed.

The Afon Anafon draws its water from a cwm in the Carneddau mountains. The Welsh name translates into English as ‘River of Wounds’.

In a moment of absence

Hen Nain, Fairhaven, Betws-y-Coed