2 poems by Annest Gwilym : Seasons in the Sun & Sometimes at Twilight…

Seasons in the Sun

She lived in a net-curtained house
with anaemic pot plants and china figurines
of big-eyed animals and ladies in long dresses.
There was always the smell 
of stale sponge cake and a scattering
of doilies, a brown flowered carpet,
drab furniture with crochet antimacassars.

She only spoke the island Welsh,
always with a twinkle in her eye.
We were no angels: girls that slipped 
melting ice lollies through the dark mouths 
of post boxes, stuck out our tongues
at strangers, danced the can-can
in her bloomers and best chapel hat
rummaged from her bedroom
while she spoke to our mother.

In a hot summer that reverberated to the sound
of roller skates tearing up concrete 
she took us in her shiny black Morris Minor, 
speeding past farms and fields of potatoes,
to the candy floss paradise of Benllech 
with its wide apron of sand and donkeys.
Me in my beloved yellow towelling hot pants, 
while Seasons in the Sun played 
from everyone’s open door.

Sometimes at Twilight . . .

I open my back door 
to the high clean ozone of the tide, 
when the chill small evening 
clinks with sounds of crockery 
from the beach-side bistro
and wine-hazed banter.

And I’m glad of cormorants 
that dry their wings
on the jetty’s end, 
sloe-dark eyes of a surfacing seal, 
plants that grow 
despite the wind’s salt charge.

Glad that in spite of poverty 
there are watery days 
of soft rain and poetry,
the past that is always present 
beneath the surface of earth and our skin,
the lost graves of my peasant ancestors.

Glad of the balm this place brings
to a frightened rescue dog 
who now calls it home, 
for being able to stand on my step at night, 
sniff the air like a fox,
for what the wind brings.

inspired by Glad of these times by Helen Dunmore

Poetry by Annest Gwilym : Rhosmeirch ’71

Wolfpack Contributor: Annest Gwilym

A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Annest Gwilym