In the Welsh mountains

The mountains tower as gigantean piles of rocks, clothed in ragged springtime grass.

Sheep speckle the valley sides, white flecks of paint on the canvas of greens, browns and bluey-greys.

Buzzard and Kite take flight, effortlessly rising the channelled air, their cries startling the silence.

Up so high lies the misty grey-blue cap of the vast cloud base, punctured by the jagged rocky peaks.

Tumbling invisible air, ever-changing clouds of spring showers, creeping shadows and bright sunlight shafts.

Water steadily drips through the sodden earth, streams gushing in pure coldness into the trout sown, slow river of the valley bottom.

Grey stone-built walls trace shaky thin lines to the distant tops, laid by purposeful hands in boundaries which once had meaning.

Up there sits the old buildings of the disused mine - rusty decaying metal and strewn boulder piles, hewn by iron-strong men, in their fleeting sacrifice.

Down here is the lushness of the valley, new life of lambs seen through emerging sticky buds of the horse-chestnut tree.

I stand a stranger in awe of this land of immense, deep beauty and mystery.

Dwarfed by the scale of the scene, my mind flooded with thoughts of forgotten stories and past generations.

The wit and the brawn, survival and battle, loves and losses, humanity and nature, my own mortality.  

All on the stage of these solid, timeless, mountains.