The Old Drovers Road
Abergwesyn to Tregaron:
how the land tips,
tilted from west to east,
Cardigan bay slurping at the rim;
up the Cambrian massif’s
steep banks and watersheds
to the bog and buzzard dotted Tops;
blissed-out by water-colour gullies of smokey, bluebelled slopes,
splodged with hawthorn and gorse.
The old way snakes over the bare, rolling heights,
pot-holed tarmac crumbling between soggy mats of tussocky moor and cotton-grass:
dry spots for dainty mountain sheep.
It is imbedded with the footprints, myths and intentions of ago;
drovers on their sturdy cobs
driving their flocks or herds
before the Atlantic gales,
towards the rising sun
leaving their mark and memory
in the ethers.
Traders and missionaries,
hunters, explorers and itinerants
engraving tracks like a deer or boar
foraging badger, wild pony or wolf.
Migratory paths as for fish, ant, bird
Imprinted in the soil.
It was just a straight line on the map
wiggling across the mountains.
A magnetical allure and fascination over and above any A or B roads
and before satellite perspectives intervened.
That is the way for me!
non-stop with my marmite sandwich
thermos of tea and ignorance
- from long distance, cross-country drawn inexorably westward and up
to this heartsease space
flush with the wide, Celtic sky.