Poetry / Betsie Flynn

'Hot Pursuit at Llyn Cwm Llwch'

Issue 2. June 21, 2021

HOT PURSUIT AT LLYN CWM LLWCH
 
You’ve always been on the tip of my tongue. Never sweet
and slow like honey dribbling from a languid finger,
you’re tangy as barbed wire dainty with blood.
 
I stalk up the mountain, my steps in your wide-paced footprints, my scarf
wet and chilled by my breath. I slide behind an upright stone, curl
brazen toes. You pluck moss with long-nailed fingers.
 
While the grass catches its breath, I grab my own stomach
and try to fill myself with the extra air. Fleeting drags
moulded where moth-wings already scudded dry.
 
My hands aren’t just shaking from the chill air. May Day by sunrise
but the frost has lingered, claws extended, this year. Daffodils
are still spurting their trumpets to chasten the gloom.
 
A threshold is thrumming in the pliant morning light, a door
back home for you. For me, it’s a promise of flowers
basking and radiant in blushing breezes. A vow
 
of a thousand midnight frolics. Fleet-winged bats and crested songbirds
our audience as we dance. And dance we will, my gate-guarding
wanderer. The dawn can’t steal my path this year.
 


 




Betsie Flynn is a Kentish transplant to the Brecon Beacons with two children and two cats, but only one husband. Intersections between cultural timescapes, landscapes, and skyscapes intrigue her. She is a fledgling Tweeter @betsieflynn