Listening to rain

I love that Heaney poem: gifts of rain
So place and personal history specific.

Today it’s rained on and off. Now in the dark of our high-beamed bedroom the rain is insistent on the skylight. It took me back to my teenage years in Merionethshire in Wales wanting some much for the rain to bring the fish upstream.

So many lovely tributes to Anna, and so lovely from Wales. Cwsg mewyn Hedd. Sleep in peace.

Listening to rain

In that back bedroom at Cae Rhys
I’d listen endlessly to the rain
Sweeping across the slates,
Urging it on: don’t falter
Wash over moor and mountain,
Overtop the cheating leet
And bring fish home
Up the Mawddach
The Eden
To the Crawcwellt.

Sewin and salmon
Under moonlit spate waters
Peat brackened and running wild.

Lying still I’d wait on each gasp of wind
Each pulse of sky-falling water
Planning flasks and food and worms,
Wet gear and spinners,
Toby lures and Devon minnows,
Leads and hooks,
Nets and gaffs,
And the old gaffer himself
To watch over crashing through fern and backwaters.

Just wishing and wishing and wishing
That morn would break,
Sullen, wet, sodden and plastered with rain,
So we could rise
And hurried dress
And through gated fields
Rush and fumble
To fish again.