Welsh Waters
by Laura Dabundo
i
Hemmed in by hedges, grown tall and taller,
Creeping more closely across the lanes,
They lightly caress the coach on either side,
Provide a labyrinth of corridors
That leads to the pilgrims’ hoped-for thin space.
ii
Draping the fell like an old woman’s shawl,
The fog sinks down through the verdant valleys,
Dampening and muting the colors,
Emeralds and ochers and umbers.
It forms a coverlet of squares and fringes
Made of puffy hedgerows, hardly hedgerows.
As the fog shifts and lifts,
A horizon emerges.
Intermittently sharp corners of gray and brown edifices appear.
The fog collapses upon the sheer fineness,
A silvery and almost white opacity
Of the lake,
Still and hardly rippled.
On the near bank, sedge and weeds
Evoke Mosaic mysteries of birth and life,
Everlasting and unchanging,
Even as it varies from moment to moment.
iii
The church tower, blunt and Norman,
Cuts foursquarely through the landscape
Heavensward and heavensfield.
Meadow and marsh and lake
Lift up mine eyes unto the hills
Whence cometh my help.
iv
Now the rain dissolves hill and lake and grass
Into the wet, the silvery whiteness.
Water and lake and holy springs
Merging sky and land, spirit and flesh, heaven and earth, and life and death,
Into a pilgrim’s thin space.
You and me and all of us
Together now and for all time
World without end.