Andrew McNeillie
Llyn-Y-Foel
True, I only went there twice,
But I was often there before,
And since. That we might go they’d air
In April or September, on the track down,
After a dour day.
It was best there early and late,
Fish tending to be lean, the water
Full of light, high
Above the workings in
The mist-shadow of Moel Siabod.
They’d weigh it up and I’d look
Across the way there, into the evening,
Longing for change. The grass is always
Greener where the heart’s at home,
But where was that?
They’d done their adventuring way back,
When I was a twinkle in the old man’s eye,
Like that first star. Now they were content
To pit themselves against the known,
And grow unknowing in perfection.
But I wanted my creel to spill
Tails and tales of my own, as of
Hard quarrymen, fishing it out
At Llugwy, on days in March so cold
Mere mortals would die there...
I wanted to cast my net on the other side
As now I want to make another kind of poem.
Those times we made the journey
It was like going on holiday,
And when we came home
There were wonders to retell. True,
Embellishment began there, and
What was true then is truer now
With just a mountainside to go,
The heart’s creel creaking.
Page(s) 68-69
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