The Brown Water Brook – Of a December train journey from Bristol to Aberystwyth

 Brown water in the brown brook

Flowing fast like a runaway crook

Swallowing hollows

Peaking on the tree lines

Of Alder, Ash and Willows

Grasses systemic in fields

Like primitive rice

Turning to boggy marsh land

And edges of birch bark

Damp and dark

With wet cloud covering everything

Up to the hill tops

Hedges black and dark,

Border fields there,

Crows in a pair

Tip toe and muzzle the earth with their beaks

Nowhere near the brown brook with the white crest peaks

Then the brook washes down again

And is seen from the train

Like a mane

Of a wild horse

Flowing down the mountain

Where Christmas tree shaped skeletons of birch fill a valley

Like forgotten Christmases past and lost to memory

Only sighted from a journey, East to West

To the Saturday noon, the moon past it’s best

And Ivied trees slender,

Others covered in moss

The dead brown of leaves

Lends a feeling strong with loss

And shadow to a crumpled land

By the wind and weather

Yet I am a changed man

Like the wind carrying a feather

It is a hope for the land

As back to view comes the brook singing

As it tributaries a larger river

As I see sheep on the hill side running

Scared from the train

The brown river running fast

With the falling rains

It is yellowy cream of churned butter,

The surface scum

That tumbles and turns

In troughs and gushes then

Like spreading fingers departs

And then it leaves the train’s route in yarn spools

To only standing water in pools

And Black slate walls

Damp

Then reeds and long grasses,

In the marshes by Macunthlyth

And Dovey Junction, fen land high

Firs in mist and fog and the sense of height

Mountain tops beyond sight

Hidden behind a curtain, a veil of white cloud

Then flat ground, flat as a fen

As the lay of an ocean bed

The wide flat river passes

Like a Mississippi over the plain

A solitary chapel on a promontory

Of a little headland into the flood bed

That is green with grass but not lush

Brown as well

And sculpted up into gentler hills

The brows of tarmac roads

And grey/white stone built houses

Start to populate and change the landscape

Into modern houses

Community greens and football grounds

Then the brown babbling brook appears again

And look as it follows the train

Down to the sea

Criss-crossing under bridges from

The crow’s path

Turning the Ystwyth

Into Aberystwyth