Afon Anafon

This is a river that kills

Barely ten foot wide in three stepped stones
I am over across to Hades
where on blistered rock
reamed white and lime with lichen
I watch water roll its leaps
from the mountain’s green belly
and it seems the all same

this side as much as the other an idyll
and I alone here this late summer’s day
save for a few sheep
searching out the elusive flower

It is hard to imagine in this warm light 
how winter comes and these bare hills 
bleed rain from every gully
spill
their spate-brown guts
two miles downstream
where tangled sheep
a hapless man
trail like any other river-weed

A revised version of a poem shortlisted for the Future Places Environmental Essay and Poetry Prize (2021)