of Nant Ffrancon, the Valley of the Otter,
They say that Lord Penrhyn’s castle is still haunted
nestled between the Glyderau and Carneddau ranges,
dreaming of the shining cirque of Cwm Idwal,
I imagined sleeping an eternity there
nestled amid the impossible summits of Snowdonia,
craigs whetting their fangs against the sky.
Once I listened to the murmuring headwaters
of Llyn Ogwen plash and foam down the rocks
to the valley below, so denuded of trees that purple slate
was hammered into thin earth to build fences,
and sheep patrolled the heather and tundra willows.
The salmon no longer return. No flash of silver and red.
The red dragon sleeps beneath Dinas Emrys.
It is said that after the Battle of Camlann,
Sir Bedwyr, that is Sir Belvedere, banished Excalibur
into the Lake of Ogwen where salmon once hurdled the cataracts.
The Lady of the Lake was not named, yet she took up the sword
to hide it in the lake’s secret depths once and forever.
But the restless sword still hungers for battles,
both real and imagined, the way we all battle death daily,
while the world turns yet another jaundiced eye
on Ukraine and Palestine. Not my war, they said,
believing in fairy tales, they returned to their drinks.
We drove into Glanogwen, renamed Bethesda, the panacea,
by invaders who quarried slate for their Norman manses,
they named the valley after their chapel, the house of mercy,
when Penrhyn couldn’t hide those who died in the quarries.
because it was built on the dark history of wealth
gleaned from mining slate, Jamaican sugar, and the slave trade.
And so it goes. Whitewater over the backs of slaves and miners.
During the Welsh Revival, they got Methodist religion,
tossing out the old ways for brimstone. The churches and pubs
of Bethesda hosted rival revivals to keep the mad world in check.
I’ll raise a glass and drink to the long steady course
so that my ashes, winnowed like unseasonable snowflakes,
will bloom on the machair, amid campion and saxifrage,
and perhaps we’ll dream again of a billowing sky at sunset,
in this land where the red dragon stirs in sleep,
and the Lady of the Lake is said to wait with Pendragon’s sword,
so that he may return, and we all may rise up again.
10/18/23 Write On! with Terri Glass
