4 Poems from Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

My Patient Lover

You stroke my tired, evening neck before a dying fire. 
You’re tried by my absence, neglecting aching
needs of your own.  You gentle my mood 
when agitation rules my restless mind 
and limbs. You sooth my endless
disappointments in myself, 
my acid doubt of others’ 
motives. You say –
look outward
into the welcoming smiles, 
the warmth
of those who now surround you.

In childhood she, my mother, 
blew and blazed, hot and cold. 
She cast me saint or sinner, 
mostly sinner. 

You alone know my truth –
I flinch from accepting love,
it hurts too much.

Ramsons

Each year Flora waits, eager for the scent of wild garlic.
Such a brief flowering. Once, in their early days, 
they’d tumbled, tangled on a woodland floor
in summer, by a Brecon stream.

New to sex, intoxicated 
by skin on skin, eyes staring deep into eyes
drunk on perfumes from crushed alliums.

Last year, she passed seventy.
He does not know her, any longer.
His eyes stare, vacant,
unfocused until 

she offers him her posy 
of ramsons. Briefly,
miraculously, the sight 
and scent stir him.

His hooded eyes shine
and for kind moments
his memory’s 
restored.

Once more,
he bathes in her beauty –
his Flora of the Beacons.

*Note: ramsons – another name for wild garlic

Palliative Care

It matters who's around, 
who shares the air, 
who breathes next to me. 
Please, hold my hand. 
Soon,

I'll cast off alone.

Estuary

Dead tired, I trudge by our riverbank, sink in mud,
hear cormorants and seagulls shriek and cry.
Bones of old ferry boats pierce through thick sludge,
I wilt beneath ghost-stares wheeling in the sky.

Hear cormorants, and seagulls, shriek and cry;
I long to free souls, trapped in birds, after death.
I wilt beneath ghost-stares wheeling in the sky;
no-one else feels their plight, lonely and bereft.

I long to free souls, trapped in birds, after death;
some young, some ancient, some slaughtered in wars.
No-one feels their plight, lonely and bereft,
how they plea to rest, washed clean on tidal shores.

Some young, some ancient, some slaughtered in wars,
all would forfeit squawking limbo, if only they could.
how they plea to rest, washed clean on tidal shores.
Dead tired, I trudge by our riverbank, sink in mud.


*Note:
Folklore is rich with stories that brings the dead and birds together, from the first recorded stories right up to the modern day.