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
