When the black boat breaks free from the hook

that hangs in the mud and the heron flies

off from its mast and the cry of gulls

like boys that are babies and far from milk and the

thrashing of dove wings in trees and

the sex sound of water on stone covered with sun

and the tern’s trill takes flight

over the brown bay booming with silence, I

wake from the tall tales of night and the nuisance

of nodding and cry no more for my homesick hills

heavy with the roar of thunder and the crash

of jagged light.

 

When the black boat breaks free from the hourglass, I

am here with the Welsh-tongued tide of a tangled bay

and the chirping wind that whispers through the

green grass for the fresh-mowed hay and the

high-brow of the hills haunted by hedgerows and

the promise of fistfights on Friday night drunken

with ale and the buzz of bees that bend

the ear of the path where no brown bear sways

and no bird sings for the sake of singing or

song or writes words for the world

choir clear down in Cardiff that clouds

can see on a clear day that catches

crawdads the way I dip words into ink

for an inkling or for a rub of flesh.

 

When the black boat breaks off from the heartland

and the highlife of high-strung sails and the

slow suicide of sun becomes food for the binge of

night and nocturne busts loose from the deathgrip of

the 1 in Wales and the laugh in Laugharne,

I reach for the aurora borealis of solstice sliding

down from the black sky to where the black boat

leans like a leak in creekbed or a lupine in wind

where a hawk hangs like lightning in my ink

and breaks free.