Cenarth Falls
3rd November
(Cenarth Falls, 2007)
Wagtails flitting over quiet waters; then the falls, the roar, the ceaselessness of time.
Upstream, quiet flow; only soft murmer of shallows further on, the running trickle. Otherwise all calm and quiet, save the muted dabbling splosh of a mallard pair diving under a bright russet-hued overhang of beech.
The hunt, beleagured hounds around me strayed too far. Deep from autumn oaks under the chapel, the huntsman’s horn blown with fury, and holloas to call them back. For some time this went on, the invisible clarion call lengthening from some undefined place among the trees, and the end-of-day calls. One by one the hounds ran by, returning.
A loud flock of starlings over the river, swift and determined as dusk falls.
That night, fireworks in the valley, and a bonfire that blazed through trees and across the river between, flames flicking high and burning orange the smoke that drifted up in the pitch darkness of a heavily overcast night. Fireworks splendid in the black, and the drifting orange smoke of gunpowder burnt. Bangs echoing all round the valley.