Llanon Slangs

by John Alcock

The sea laps low
amber and grey reflecting
the drawn-in evening
scarce of crawl and sprawl
along the shingled beach
only the occasional seventh wave
causing the fringing seabirds
to shriek and wheel
before returning to their tide-line forage

Flat on the land the slangs of Morfa Esgob
lie stretched and furlonged between
ribbons of fence and wire as they have done
since middle times   Rhandir/shareland
sliding down from village to shore
fostering dun ponies and scratting hens
centuries-long crops of beans
and barley for the defiant brew
bane of law-chasing customs men

Time eases these long-farmed channels
of loam and grass down towards other
deep-fish lines once set by Strata Florida monks
and still perceivable   marked now
by orange-and-lemon lobster buoys
where water merges into further land
unsluicing at lowest tide
stumps of a forest five millennia drowned
deep in the sunken hundred of Cantrer Gwaelod